Authors: Martin Melosi.
Paperback, 221 pages
Publisher: Longman
Publication Date: 1997-01-17


Reviews :

    Thomas A. Edison and the Modernization of Americais a captivating narrative that chronicles America's most formidable inventor. Martin Melosi creates a dynamic historical narrative by relating Edison's personal history to larger cultural, political and economic trends. Melosi adeptly reveals the workings of Edison's mind as well as his inventions' lasting affect on the nation. The titles in the Library of American Biography Series make ideal supplements for American History Survey courses or other courses in American history where figures in history are explored. Paperback, brief, and inexpensive, each interpretive biography in this series focuses on a figure whose actions and ideas significantly influenced the course of American history and national life. In addition, each biography relates the life of its subject to the broader themes and developments of the times....

Authors: Richard Stivers.
Hardcover, 240 pages
Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group
Publication Date: 1999-10

Authors: Stephen Johnson.
Hardcover, 272 pages
Publisher: HarperOne
Publication Date: 1997-10-29
Edition: 1st

Reviews :

    "As our machines are increasingly jacked into global networks of information, it becomes more and more difficult to "imagine" the dataspace at our fingertips, to picture all that complexity in our mind's eye . . . Representing all that information is going to require a new visual language, as complex and meaningful as the great metropolitan narratives of the 19th-century novel."--from "Interface Culture" In this hip, erudite manifesto, Steven Johnson--one of the most influential people in cyberspace, according to "Newsweek" bridges the gap that yawns between technology and the arts. Drawing on his own expertise in the humanities and on the Web, he not only demonstrates how interfaces--those buttons, graphics and words on the screen through which we control information--influence our daily lives, but also tracks their roots back to Victorian novels, early cinema and even medieval urban planning. The result is a lush cultural and historical tableau in which today's interfaces take their rightful place in the lineage of artistic innovation. With "Interface Culture," Johnson brilliantly charts the vital role interface design plays in modern society. Just as the great novels of Melville, Dickens and Zola explain a rapidly industralizing society to itself, he argues, web sites, Microsoft Bob, flying toasters and the landscapes of video games tell the digital society how to imagine itself and how to get around in cyberspace's unfamiliar realm. The role once played by novelists is now fulfilled by the interface designer, who has bridged the gap between technology and everyday life by providing a conceptual framework for the vast amounts of information and computation that surround us. Johnson boldly explores the past--a terrain few tech thinkers have dared enter, and one that throws dazzling light on the modern interface's roots. From the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages to the rise of perspective drawing in the Renaissance, from Enlightenment satire to the golden age of television, "Interface Culture" uses a wealth of venerable "interface innovation" to place newfangled creations like Windows 95 and the Web in a rich historical context. Controversial, clear-sighted and challenging, "Interface Culture" also looks at the future--from what PC screens will look like in 10 years to how new interfaces will alter the style of our conversation, prose and thoughts. With a distinctively accessible style, "Interface Culture" brings new intellectual depth to the vital discussion of how technology has transformed society, and is sure to provoke wide debate in both literary and technological circles....

    Steven Johnson turns the tables on the way we consider our computer interfaces. While many discussions focus on how interfaces help us work by adapting to our ways of thinking and our real-world metaphors, Johnson jumps from there to look at how our thinking and world view are altered by our computer interfaces.

He begins with the simple: The mouse improved the spatial nature of our computers by letting us move, by the proxy of our pointers, within the screen. The windows metaphor made cyberspace a 3-D space. And while we tend to think about the graphical nature of interfaces, Johnson also explores the textual side and how it has changed the way we work with the written word.

Interface Culture then goes on to show how, with each advance in technology, the interface shapes our perceptions in new ways. Where mice and windows turned the computing world into cyberspace, agents have created a perception of software as personality. On the larger scale, Johnson sees these tools, originally built on noncyber metaphors, as creating, in their turn, a new set of metaphors for looking at the rest of the world. And while he finds it exciting, he spends considerable time on such shortcomings in our approach to interfacing: what he considers the excessive emphasis on graphics elements at the cost of anything textual. Johnson, who is the editor of the cerebral Feed Web site and whom Newsweek called one of the most influential people in cyberspace, has written an intelligent book about interface design, its relationship to the real world, and how it affects our perception of worlds both cyber and physical....

Authors: Christopher T. Hill.
Digital, 17 pages
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Publication Date: 2007-09-22


Reviews :

    This digital document is an article from Issues in Science and Technology, published by Thomson Gale on September 22, 2007. The length of the article is 5037 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The post-scientific society: although science and technology will continue to play a vital role in innovation, the critical ingredients for continued U.S. economic success are likely to come from other disciplines.(Global Innovation)
Author: Christopher T. Hill
Publication: Issues in Science and Technology (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 22, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 24 Issue: 1 Page: 78(7)

Distributed by Thomson Gale...

Authors: Carla G. Surratt.
Paperback, 239 pages
Publisher: McFarland
Publication Date: 2001-05-15


Reviews :

    Starting with only four hosts in 1969, the Internet consisted of over 56 million hosts by the end of 1999. In 1993, the World Wide Web was only 130 sites strong; six years later it boasted more than seven million sites. Despite this explosive growth of the Internet and computer technology, little is known about the social implications of computer mediated communications. In this work, the author uses social science theory to evaluate the social transformations taking place today. She asks whether human beings use the Internet to change basic social institutions, and if so, whether these changes are a matter of degree only or represent an overthrow of previous modes of organizing. The work examines the rise of the Internet as the logical extension of the Industrial Revolution and urbanization consistent with the basic tenets of modernity, and offers a new conceptual framework through which to understand the Internet....

Authors: Xiaoling Zhang.
Hardcover, 192 pages
Publisher: Routledge
Publication Date: 2009-02-15
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    In recent years, China has experienced a revolution in information and communications technology (ICT), in 2003 surpassing the USA as the world's largest telephone market, and as of February 2008, the number of Chinese Internet users has become the largest in the world. At the same time, China has overtaken the USA as the world's biggest supplier of information technology goods. However, this transformation has occurred against the backdrop of a resolutely authoritarian political system and strict censorship by the Party-state.This book examines China's ICT revolution, exploring the social, cultural and political implications of China's transition to a more information-rich and communication-intensive society. The pace of the development of ICT in China has precipitated much speculation about political change and democratization. This book explores the reality of ICT in China, showing clearly that whilst China remains a one-party state, with an ever-present and sophisticated regime of censorship, substantial social and political changes have taken place.It considers the ICT revolution in all its aspects, outlining the dominant trends, the impact on other countries of China as an ICT exporter, strategies of government censorship and use of ICT for propaganda, the implications of censorship for Chinese governance, the political implications of internet culture and blogging, and the role of domestic and foreign NGOs. Overall, this book is a vital resource for anyone seeking to understand a rapidly transforming China, both today and in the years to come....

Authors: James Rodger Fleming.
Hardcover, 208 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Publication Date: 1998-09-10


Reviews :

    This intriguing volume provides a thorough examination of the historical roots of global climate change as a field of inquiry, from the Enlightenment to the late twentieth century. Based on primary and archival sources, the book is filled with interesting perspectives on what people have understood, experienced, and feared about the climate and its changes in the past. Chapters explore climate and culture in Enlightenment thought; climate debates in early America; the development of international networks of observation; the scientific transformation of climate discourse; and early contributions to understanding terrestrial temperature changes, infrared radiation, and the carbon dioxide theory of climate. But perhaps most important, this book shows what a study of the past has to offer the interdisciplinary investigation of current environmental problems....

Authors: Enid Mumford.
Hardcover, 304 pages
Publisher: Idea Group Publishing
Publication Date: 2003-03-20


Reviews :

    Organizational change is becoming increasingly complex, challenging and difficult to handle as technology advances. And there is a need to discuss how it can be both more effectively managed by large and small organizations, while at the same time the strategies for changes are based on ethical notions of democracy and participation. Assists those interested in and responsible for the management of major change within organizations, and provides the theories and values that should be adhered to in order to achieve that change successfully and effectively....

Authors:
Paperback, 1728 pages
Publisher: Battelle Press
Publication Date: 1998-02

Authors:
Hardcover, 224 pages
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Publication Date: 1984-08