The objective of this work is to analyse technology and social relationships using the concept of knowledge. Therefore technology is not only a means to produce and social relationships a means to interact, but also the result of a whole of elements. The concept of knowledge aims to analyse these elements both from a structural point of view, highlighting their characteristics, and from a dynamic point of view, which considers how subjects interpret and make sense of them. In (...) this framework technologies and social relationships are reinterpreted according to knowledge that characterises each context, suggesting some clues to design technologies, information technologies and social policies. (shrink)

Technology regulation is one of the most important public policy issues facing society and governments at the present time, and further clarity could improve decision making in this complex and challenging area. Since the rise of the internet in the late 1990s, a number of approaches to technology regulation have been proposed, prompted by the associated changes in society, business and law that this development brought with it. However, over the past decade, the impact of technology has (...) been profound and the associated issues for government have extremely challenging, ranging across cyber security, artificial intelligence, and many other areas. To that end, this article introduces a Theory of Institutional Technology Actors and Norms (TITAN), a normatively informed and institutionally-based account of technology regulation. It focuses on the moral and legal (including regulatory) rights and responsibilities of the relevant actors and seeks to inform the development of regulation that is both fit for purpose, rights compliant and fair for all concerned. The account incorporates the perspectives of four key categories of groups in society: producers of technology, users of technology, government regulators, and normative policy shapers. (shrink)

The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is responsible for conducting health technology assessment on behalf of the National Health Service. In seeking to justify its recommendations to the NHS about which technologies to fund, NICE claims to adopt two complementary ethical frameworks, one procedural—accountability for reasonableness —and one substantive—an ‘ethics of opportunity costs’ that rests primarily on the notion of allocative efficiency. This study is the first to empirically examine normative changes to NICE’s approach and (...) to analyse whether these enhance or diminish the fairness of its decision-making, as judged against these frameworks. It finds that increasing formalisation of NICE’s approach and a weakening of the burden of proof laid on technologies undergoing HTA have together undermined its commitment to EOC. This implies a loss of allocative efficiency and a shift in the balance of how the interests of different NHS users are served, in favour of those who benefit directly from NICE’s recommendations. These changes also weaken NICE’s commitment to AfR by diminishing the publicity of its decision-making and by encouraging the adoption of rationales that cannot easily be shown to meet the relevance condition. This signals a need for either substantial reform of NICE’s approach, or more accurate communication of the ethical reasoning on which it is based. The study also highlights the need for further empirical work to explore the impact of these policy changes on NICE’s practice of HTA and to better understand how and why they have come about. (shrink)

Formal, informal and material institutions constitute the framework for human interaction and communicative practice. Three ideas from institutional theory are particularly relevant to technical change. Exclusion cost refers to the effort that must be expended to prevent others from usurping or interfering in one’s use or disposal of a given good or resource. Alienability refers to the ability to tangibly extricate a good or resource from one setting, making it available for exchange relations. Rivalry refers to the degree and character (...) of compatibility in various uses for goods. The paper closes with a note on how attention to these factors might be useful ways toconceptualize what Langdon Winner has called “the technological constitution of society,” and what Andrew Feenberg has theorized as “secondary rationalization,” as well as within more practical contexts of technical research, development and design. (shrink)

Technology transfer is a multi-level process of communication involving a variety of senders and receivers of ideas and materials. As a response to market failure, or as an effort to accelerate market-driven social change, technology transfer may combine public and private aparatus or rely solely on public institutional mechanisms to identify, develop, and deliver innovations and information. Technology transfer institutions include universities, government ministries, research institutes, and what may be termed the ‘project sector’. Four farm- and village-level (...) change models are considered: traditional community development, adoption-diffusion, training and Visit Extension, and Farming Systems Research. The challenges to technology transfer efforts center on developing indigenous capacity to generate and adapt agricultural technology to local conditions. This is the primary objective of technology transfer in agriculture and the basis for advancing rural development. (shrink)

Technology permeates all walks of life. It has emerged as a global facilitator to improve learning and training, alleviating the temporal and spatial limitations of traditional learning systems. It is imperative to identify enablers or inhibitors of technology adoption by employees for sustainable change in education management systems. Using the theoretical lens of organizational support theory, this paper studies effect of institutional support on education management information systems use along with two individual traits of self-efficacy and innovative behavior (...) of academic employees in British higher educational institutions. Data for this cross-sectional study were collected through a questionnaire completed by 591 academic employees of 23 universities from 10 cities in the United Kingdom. Partial Least Square structural equation modeling was used to analyze data with smartPLS 3.2.9 software. Results indicate that institutional support promotes self-efficacy and innovative behavior that help develop positive employee perceptions. The model explains a 52.9% variance in intention to use. Post-hoc mediation analysis shows that innovativeness and self-efficacy mediate between institutional support and employee technology adoption behavior. As opposed to student samples in past studies on educational technology, this study adds to the literature by focusing on academic employees. (shrink)

This article addresses the relationship between technology and institutions and asks whether technology itself is an institution. The argument is that social theorists need to attend better to materiality: the world of things and objects of which technical things form an important class. It criticizes the new institutionalism in sociology for its failure to sufficiently open up the black box of technology. Recent work in science and technology studies (S&TS) and in particular the sociology of (...) class='Hi'>technology is reviewed as another route into dealing with technology and materiality. The recent ideas in sociology of technology are exemplified with the author’s study of the development of the electronic music synthesizer. (shrink)

La littérature sur le sentier de corrélation met en doute l’efficience du mécanisme de marché en ce qui concerne le choix des technologies et des normes caractérisé par les rendements croissants.Récemment cette idée a attiré l’attention de quelques chercheurs spécialisés dans le processus de changement institutionnel. Dans cet article je soutiens qu’il y a de sérieux défauts dans la manière dont le sentier de corrélation des changements technologiques est habituellement présenté. Le point principal est quoi qu’il en soit le changement (...) institutionnel. Ici, je montre que le concept de sentier de corrélation nécessite quelques modifications avant qu’il ne puisse être appliqué fructueusement.The literature of path-dependence casts doubt on the efficiency of the market mechanism concerning the choice of technologies and standards characterized by increasing returns. Recently this idea has aroused interest among scholars inquiring into the process of institutional change. In this article I argue that there are serious shortcomings in the way pathdependence of technological change is usually presented. The main focus is, however on institutional change. Here I show that the concept ot pathdependence needs some modification before it can fruitfully be applied. (shrink)

One way to increase the effectiveness of a mobile-oriented learning environment is to use augmented reality technology, which enables the integration of real and virtual learning tools using mobile Internet devices. The purpose of the article is to theoretically substantiate the use of augmented reality technology in physics classes. The article describes and substantiates the relevance of the application of augmented reality technology, considers possible uses of this technology in the educational process, in particular in terms (...) of mobile distance learning. Examples of mobile applications aimed at practice-oriented learning using augmented reality technology are described. Examples of real educational systems that allow to study the disciplines of physical orientation on the basis of this technology are considered. It was found that augmented reality technologies stimulate the educational process and provide the opportunity to implement knowledge in both humanities and natural sciences. This technology expands the educational process towards clarity and motivates the student to further study the material. Visual education is the best thing that can be offered to modern students, which will contribute to the development of scientific and technological progress. The introduction of augmented reality technology makes it possible to improve the quality of education by motivating students to self-study, increasing audience interest in educational material, developing a desire to use modern interactive technical capabilities and technologies, replacing textbooks and laboratory equipment with multimedia computer models. distance learning. (shrink)

History works written in the style of chronicles are used not only for the purpose for which they were written. Chronic works may also contain reflections on the position of the ulema (ʿulamāʾ) at the time of its writing and his view of the scientific world of the period in which he lived. This work is based on the book ʿIqd al-jumān fī taʾrīkh ahl al-zamān written by the celebrated Ḥanafī jurist (faqīh) and muḥaddith Badr al-Dīn al-ʿAynī as a public (...) history book. This article, focuses on the state of ḥadīth science and scholars in the Mamlūks between the years 648-707 (1250-1307) and approaches of al-ʿAynī to these issues based on the work of ʿIqd al-jumān. For this purpose, the work has been examined in terms of certain keywords that allude to the history of ḥadīth through electronic sources. In addition, the work has been completely reviewed with the traditional method in terms of allusions and information about the hadith studies of the Mamlūks period. Eventually, the historical elements of ḥadīth referred to in ʿIqd al-jumān, scientific institutions, different groups of rāwī, different narration methods and classifications made during the period have been identified. In addition, the professional, sectarian and political trends of the muḥaddith of the period in question were focused on. Comparing the information in the sources written in the field of general history with the studies focusing directly on the historical elements of ḥadīth will contribute to compare the similarities and divergences. This study is an example of how to make use of the wafayāt sections in chronicle works. Examining a single book that was not written directly in the field of ḥadīth - even if it contains important information - is not enough to find elements about the history of ḥadīth and to make constructions regarding it. This necessitates the formation of a team that will examine a large number of books using the same criteria. (shrink)

University students will be our future business leaders, and will have to address social problems caused by business by implementing solutions such as social entrepreneurship ventures. In order to facilitate the learning process that will foster social entrepreneurship, however, a more holistic pedagogy is needed. Based on learning theory, we propose that students’ social entrepreneurship actions will depend on their learning about CSR and their absorptive capacity. We propose that instructors and higher education institutions can enhance this absorptive capacity by (...) exploiting Web 2.0 technologies. We tested our proposition with a sample of 425 university students using structural equation modeling and found support for the proposed relationships. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References and Further Reading.

Until recently, Australia had little installed wind capacity, although there had been many investigations into its potential during the preceding decades. Formerly, state-owned monopoly utilities showed only token interest in wind power and could dictate the terms of energy debates. This situation changed in the late 1990s: Installed wind capacity began growing rapidly following the introduction of supportive renewable energy policies and the restructuring of the electricity industry. However, wind farms still provide only 1% of Australia's electricity, the future of (...) supportive policies is uncertain, and industry momentum is yet to become self-sustaining. Wind power, the authors argue, faces significant technological and institutional barriers, which need to be overcome if wind power is to play a significant role in Australia's electricity supply. The current window of opportunity is providing—for the first time—a significant space in which these barriers can be better understood and addressed and the requirements for wind power institutionally embedded. (shrink)

Technology assessment (TA) is – for several reasons – not detachable from ethical questions. The development of institutions and concepts for TA, especially in the USA and Western Europe, has been marked by an increasing tendency to focus evaluative and normative questions. In the following paper, we point out, in as far as the common notions of TA are implicitly normative, why reflection upon conceptual options of TA inevitably leads to ethical questions, and that the key question of participation (...) necessarily comes up in the context of societal decisions made under conditions of risk or uncertainty. Arrangements of participatory and discoursive TA are referred to as possible applications of discourse ethics, but there are consequences to consider, which result from discourses in TA not being ideal discourses. Concepts and performance of TA arrangements on biotechnology and gene technology in different European countries are compared, analysing what similarities and differences can be found with respect to ethical clarification. Crucial questions of how to conceptualise participatory TA (pTA) and current topics in ethics of technology are shown to coincide. A proposal is presented of how these – theoretical normative and empirical descriptive – considerations can be used in a comprehensive conception for participatory and discoursive TA. (shrink)

Acclaimed throughout the world as a philosopher of liberation and revolution, Herbert Marcuse is one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. His penetrating critiques of the ways modern technology produces forms of society and culture with oppressive modes of social control indicate his enduring significance in the contemporary moment. This collection of unpublished or uncollected essays, unfinished manuscripts, and correspondence between 1942 and 1951, provides Marcuse's exemplary attempts to link theory with practice, and develops ideas that (...) can be used to grasp and transform existing social reality. These papers vividly chronicle Marcuse's increasing, yet reluctant estrangement from Max Horkeimer, director of the Institute for Social Research and his years as an analyst with various U.S. government agencies. Marcuse's later attempts to link theory and practice in the 1960s and 1970s in regard to the New Left, National Liberation Movements and other new social movements were grounded in his work from the 1940s. As the 1940s witnessed the rise to global prominence of German fascism and its defeat in World War Two, and the emergence of the Cold War, Marcuse strived to preserve the radical vision of his youth during a difficult historical period while many turned toward more conservative positions. Precisely the sort of broad theoretical and political theorizing that Marcuse undertook througout his life is needed today to analyze the momentous changes that we are currently undergoing. Excerpt: Personal history is interwoven with intellectual and political events in these papers. We debated whether letters belonged here: whether some should be published at all. My father had a deep sense of personal privacy, both as a character trait and as a political expression of resistance to the commodification of the private. Yet the letters contain substantive discussions also. We could have edited out, expurgated some of the material. While not publishing every letter my father wrote, our selection was based on interest, and every letter that is included is included in full. That decision was in part painful for me personally. The juxtaposition of the letters to Horkeimer and the exchange with Heidegger highlights the point. --from the Foreword by Peter Marcuse. (shrink)

Information technology is an integral part of the practices and institutions of post-industrial society. It is also a source of hard moral questions and thus is both a probing and relevant area for moral theory. In this volume, an international team of philosophers sheds light on many of the ethical issues arising from information technology, including informational privacy, digital divide and equal access, e-trust and tele-democracy. Collectively, these essays demonstrate how accounts of equality and justice, property and privacy (...) benefit from taking into account how information technology has shaped our social and epistemic practices and our moral experiences. Information technology changes the way that we look at the world and deal with one another. It calls, therefore, for a re-examination of notions such as friendship, care, commitment and trust. (shrink)

Radical changes of our cultural values in the near future are inevitable, since the current culture is ecologically unsustainable. The present proposal, radical as it may seem to some, is accordingly offered as worthy of consideration. The main section of this article is on a proposed scheme, named Asset and Income Limits, for instituting maxima to the legitimate incomes and assets of individuals. This scheme involves every individual being associated with two bank accounts, an asset account (their own property) and (...) a holding account (held in escrow). Other parts of the advocated change in economic landscape are a radically different understanding of the concept of work and the introduction of a basic income. The roles of technology and culture, in creating both the opportunities and the obstacles to a transformation of society, are discussed. Non-monetary, non-convertible rewards for exceptional contributions to society are described. The scheme enhances freedom, being neutral in relation to many other value systems, such as the secular/sacred spectrum. The qualitative versus quantitative dichotomy is addressed, and it is concluded that the most that can be said of a just and sustainable society that has yet to be created is that the maximum income should be no more than one order of magnitude greater than the basic income, that is ~10 times at the most. Incentives for profitable employment would still be sufficient, and paying the basic income out of taxes on sales and/or non-basic income would be feasible. (shrink)

This book explores politics as a form of alchemy, understood as the transformation of entities through an alteration of their identities. Identifying this process as a common denominator of many political phenomena, such as communism, EU integration, mediatisation or globalisation, the author demonstrates not only the widespread presence of alchemical techniques in politics, but also the acceleration of their deployment. A study of the steady growth of power as it reaches a continuous and permanent stage, thus avoiding the inherent difficulties (...) connected with birth and death of political organisations and institutions, this volume reveals political alchemy to be a form of self-sustaining growth through sterile multiplication, devoid of meaning. Revealing both the integrative and disintegrative nature of a political process that, while appearing to work in the interests of all, in fact produces apathy, desperate mobilisation and despair by crushing concrete entities such as personality and tradition, Political Alchemy: Technology Unbounded will appeal to scholars of sociology and anthropology with interests in social theory and political thought. (shrink)

The use of technology and teaching techniques derived from technology is currently a bourgeoning topic in higher education. Teachers at all levels and types of institutions want to know how these new technologies will affect what happens in and outside of the classroom. Many teachers have already embraced some of these technologies but remain uncertain about their educational efficacy. Other teachers have waited because they are reluctant to try tools or techniques that remain unproven or, as is often (...) the case, lack institutional support. This book is designed to help both groups, so that those with technological expertise can extend their knowledge, while technological novices can "ramp up" at their own pace and for their own purposes. Best Practices for Technology-Enhanced Teaching and Learning brings together expert teacher-scholars who apply and assess technology's impact on traditional, hybrid or blended, or completely on-line courses, relying on technology as a teaching tool for classroom management and interaction, as well as student-based uses of technology largely independent of instructors. Each chapter will address how technological improvements can be connected to assessment initiatives, as is now routinely advocated in psychology and social science education. The book features current scholarship and pedagogy involving innovative technology that impacts on student learning in psychology and related disciplines, focusing also on student reactions to these novel technologies, and proper assessments of how well they promote learning. This text will serve as the standard reference on emerging technologies for undergraduate instructors. (shrink)

This paper argues that even though massive technological unemployment will likely be one of the results of automation, we will not need to institute mass-scale redistribution of wealth to deal with its consequences. Instead, reasons are given for cautious optimism about the standards of living the newly unemployed workers may expect in the fully-automated future. It is not claimed that these predictions will certainly bear out. Rather, they are no less likely to come to fruition than the predictions of (...) those authors who predict that massive technological unemployment will lead to the suffering of the masses on such a scale that significant redistributive policies will have to be instituted to alleviate it. Additionally, the paper challenges the idea that the existence of a moral obligation to help the victims of massive unemployment justifies the coercive taking of anyone else’s property. (shrink)

Scholarly discourse on “disruptive technologies” has been strongly influenced by disruptive innovation theory. This theory is tailored for analyzing disruptions in markets and business. It is of limited use, however, in analyzing the broader social, moral and existential dynamics of technosocial disruption. Yet these broader dynamics should be of great scholarly concern, both in coming to terms with technological disruptions of the past and those of our current age. Technologies can disrupt social relations, institutions, epistemic paradigms, foundational concepts, values, and (...) even the nature of human cognition and experience – domains of disruption that are largely neglected in existing discourse on disruptive technologies. Accordingly, this paper seeks to reorient scholarly discussion around a broader notion of technosocial disruption. This broader notion raises three foundational questions. First, how can technosocial disruption be conceptualized in a way that clearly sets it apart from the disruptive innovation framework? Secondly, how does the notion of technosocial disruption relate to the concordant notions of “disruptor” and “disruptiveness”? Thirdly, can we advance criteria to assess the “degree of social disruptiveness” of different technologies? The paper clarifies these questions and proposes an answer to each of them. In doing so, it advances “technosocial disruption” as a key analysandum for future scholarship on the interactions between technology and society. (shrink)

Technology and Ethics. A European Quest for Responsible Engineering, edited by B. Heriard Dubreuil and his team (University Lille) is in many regards an innovative publication. It is the first fully European contribution to the field of engineering ethics and the result of an intensive cooperation between ethicists and engineers from all the member countries of the European Union. The basic structure of the book is both the distinction and interaction between three levels of analysis: personal responsibility of engineers, (...) the institutional level (business organisations) and the impact of technology on society and culture. On the personal level, the book deals with problems such as the role of professional codes and the fact that engineers must cope with flexibility, shorter lines of decision and erosion of the boundaries between private and professional life. On the meso level, the book deals with different aspects of decision making in the context of business organizations, such as quality management, technology assessment procedures, business ethics committees etc... On the macro level, the authors focus on the power of technology. Together with the influences from other social, economic and political actors, the decisions of engineers change the world in a way which is of moral significance. (shrink)

Even though it is often presumed that the use of technology like medication administration technology is both safer and more effective, the importance of nurses' know‐how is not to be underestimated. In this article, we accordingly try to argue that nurses' labor, including their different forms of knowledge, must play a crucial role in the development, implementation and use of medication administration technology. Using three different theoretical perspectives (‘heuristic lenses') and integrating this with our own ethnographic research, (...) we will explore how nursing practices change through the use of medication technology. Ultimately, we will argue that ignoring (institutional) complexity and the various types of important knowledge that nurses have, will seriously complicate the implementation of medication administration technology. (shrink)

This collection of essays is a genuinely interdisciplinary exploration of the changing relationship of pedagogy, technology, and human beings in contemporary educational and cultural settings. The authors draw upon the most recent theoretical developments in education, the arts, the human body, and technology to interrogate changing pedagogical practices both inside and beyond educational institutions. Their focus on new forms of cultural exchange constitutes a radical re-thinking of the nature of pedagogical events beyond the boundaries of the traditional educational (...) disciplines. (shrink)

Read any newspaper or watch your television and as often as not you will be confronted by the worries, hopes, challenges, and mistakes of science and technology. Sociology has been trying to make sense of science for many years, while government and industry have promoted and exploited it for even longer. But what are science and technology? How have they been shaped by society? What new directions are they taking? Andrew Webster provides a lively and accessible introduction to (...) the sociological analysis of science and technology, exploring contemporary debates in a comprehensive and balanced fashion, and showing how the findings of sociologists of science relate to important issues of science policy and politics. Biotechnology and genetic engineering, technology transfer, feminist and radical critiques of science, "big science" projects, science parks and research within private industry are some of the topics that provide the focus for a wide-ranging, critical yet constructive sociological discussion. Science, Technology, and Society will be of particular value to students, academics, and practitioners involved in studying and helping to shape these two very powerful institutions of society. (shrink)

Social and environmental problems attributed to current electricity sector restructuring structures are spelled out. The energy source choices and market power of large industrial and commercial users versus residential consumers are compared. An institutional analytic approach is used to reveal the best option to alleviate the social and environmental problems associated with electricity restructuring. Community aggregation emerges with great potential to achieve meaningful social and environmental improvement.

The Dark Posthuman: Dehumanization, Technology, and the Atlantic World explores how liberal humanism first enlivened, racialized, and gendered global cartographies, and how memory, ancestry, expression, and other aspects of social identity founded in its theories and practices made for the advent of the category of the posthuman through the dimensions of cultural, geographic, political, social, and scientific classification. The posthuman is very much the product of world-building narratives that have their beginnings in the commercial franchise and are fundamentally rooted (...) in science, governance, and economics around the hegemonic appropriation of environments and commodification of bodies that initially fuelled white settler life worlds and continue to be operational in the way we conceive of these worlds as continuous ontological formations. The want has always been for ownership of any of these dimensions of being without regard to condition, to not remain stranded as the subsidiary of another's being, to another's claim to humanity, and finally, to escape the suffocating confines of an instrumental ontology that suggests a subcategory of humanity without rights onto itself. The Dark Posthuman distinguishes the posthuman's place within both the liberal and neoliberal imaginary and reveals how its appearance first entrenched itself through the avarice of English settler colonialism, and subsequently, through the paranoia of American slavery. This same figure of the posthuman played a crucial role in the functional adaptation of Cold War behavioural cybernetics, and thereafter, in the fetishization of technology within the era of global financialization. The shadowing of this arrangement during and beyond the long duration of humanity's domination of this world becomes the structural web work of this book. Stephanie Polsky is an interdisciplinary writer and academic working in the areas of Media Studies and Visual Culture. Her work explores the confluence of power around race and gender as technologies of governance. She has lectured widely in media and cultural studies, critical theory, and visual culture at a number of prestigious institutions including Goldsmiths University, Regent's University London, University of Greenwich, and Winchester School of Art. Most recently she has worked at California College of the Arts in Critical Studies and Diversity Studies. She holds a PhD in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London and an MA in Media Studies from the University of Sussex. Her books include The End of the Future: Governing Consequence in the Age of Digital Sovereignty (Academica Press, 2019), Ignoble Displacement: Dispossessed Capital in Neo-Dickensian London (Zero Books, 2015), and Walter Benjamin's Transit: A Destructive Tour of Modernity (Academica Press, 2009). (shrink)

This article is tied to the main objective of my research, which is to determine how environmental concepts about an urban industrial community were communicated to working-class immigrant and migrant children and their responses to these efforts. I would like this research to contribute to the understanding of why these groups have traditionally been subjected to a disproportionate amount of toxic and hazardous waste in their communities. As a result of this phenomena, the health of children and nonworking women in (...) these communities was severely impacted because of the amount of time they spent in the community. This article is a reflection of the history of the working class in Chicago and will attempt to elucidate the role of women in shaping the community’s concepts of their new environment as well as their concepts of health. The article will examine the educational efforts of public and nonprofit institutions, which focused on environmental and health issues for Eastern European immigrant and minority migrant children who worked and or lived around the notorious packing houses in Chicago. Preliminary research has shown that the educational and political efforts of settlement houses and public health agencies that implemented environmental or health programs for these communities’children were run primarily by women living inside or outside of these communities. (shrink)

This study aims to compare and contrast how specific information health technologies (IHTs) have been debated, how they have proliferated, and what they have enabled in Germany’s and England’s healthcare systems. For this a discourse analysis was undertaken that specifically focussed on future-scenarios articulated in policy documents and strategy papers released by relevant actors from both healthcare systems. The study reveals that the way IHTs have been debated and how they have proliferated depends on country-specific regulatory structures, their respective values, (...) actors’ and institutions’ organized interests, and the status of health professionals. These conditions have enabled IHTs to promote a new and similar concept of patienthood in both countries, although they tend to affect practitioners’ practices more dramatically in England. The conclusion is drawn that with the usage of IHTs, healthcare systems reproduced existing patterns of health provision while also enabling a sort of convergence. Future research should investigate whether the new concept of patienthood emerging in both welfare states actually suits patients’ and professionals’ needs and requirements. (shrink)

A new traditional economy combines elements of traditional culture, such as Confucianism, with a modern, technologically advanced economy, while a new institutional economy minimizes transactions costs through its institutional structure. South Korea has enhanced its competitive edge by drawing on Confucian elements such as respect for education and the search for family-like harmony in chaebol corporations that can reduce transactions costs (despite problems) in an open system. Despite also emphasizing respect for education, North Korea has drawn on anti-mercantile elements of (...) the Confucian tradition such as the excessive authoritarianism of its command socialism and the hermit-like closure induced by its juche policy of self-reliance. (shrink)

Healthcare under the auspices of late‐stage capitalism is a total institution that mortifies nurses and patients alike, demanding conformity, obedience, perfection. This capture, which resembles Deleuze's enclosure, entangles nurses in carceral systems and gives way to a postenclosure society, an institution without walls. These societies of control constitute another sort of total institution, more covert and insidious for their invisibility (Deleuze, 1992). While Delezue (1992) named physical technologies like electronic identification badges as key to understanding these societies of control, the (...) political economy of late‐stage capitalism functions as a total institution with no cohesive, centralized, connected material apparatus required. In this manuscript, we outline the ways in which the healthcare industrial complex demands nurse conformity and how that, in turn, operationalizes nurses in service to the institution. This foundation leads to the assertion that nursing must foster a radical imagination for itself, unbound by reality as it presently exists, in order that we might conjure more just, equitable futures for caregivers and care receivers alike. To tease out what a radical imagination might look like, we dwell in paradox: getting folks the care they need in capitalist healthcare systems; engaging nursing's deep history to inspire alternative understandings for the future of the discipline; and how nursing might divest from extractive institutional structures. This paper is a jumping‐off place to interrogate the ways institutions telescope and where nursing fits into the arrangement. (shrink)

The developing countries are currently undergoing a perhaps unprecedented technological revolution that has given new credence and life to the concept of alienation after a period of relative decline in which M arxian, existentialist, and other modern discourses were replaced with postmodern perspectives skeptical or critical of the concept of alienation. In this paper, I want to suggest that emergent information and communication technologies and the restructuring of global capitalism require us to rethink the problematics of technology and alienation. (...) If it is true that we are undergoing a Great Transformation, one of the epochal shifts within the history of capitalism, that the new technologies are taking us into a novel field of cultural experience and that the very nature of human identity and social relations are changing, then obviously we need to develop fresh theories to analyze these changes and politics to respond to them.2 For many, the changes underway on a global scale are as thorough-going and dramatic as the shift from the stage of market and competitive and laissez-faire capitalism theorized by M arx to the stage of state monopoly capitalism critically analyzed by the Frankfurt School in the 1930s.3 Theorizing this ongoing and epic transformation requires critical social theory to engage anew the relations between the economy, state, culture industry, science and technology, social institutions and everyday life as radically as the Frankfurt School revised classical M arxism in the 1930s. In this context, talking about technology and alienation is not just an academic affair, the latest twist in the discourse of alienation or of technology, but rather concerns the fate of the human being in the contemporary world and thus requires serious reflection and discussion whether the changes in society, culture, and human existence are or are not beneficial, and what we can do to promote a positive outcome and prevent a harmful one.. (shrink)

Technology is not just a tool but an amalgam of conceptual, institutional, and interactional issues that occupy the space of technical reason. In this space, parents' identity is becoming narrowed according to a limited conception in which the place of caring is in danger of being lost. Parents are increasingly required to adopt knowledge on parent ing instead of adapting it to their child's needs. By use of the Heideggerian idea of Enframing, I argue that educational experts and practitioners (...) need to undo parent ing from this technological straitjacket. It needs to be recognised that being a parent is about ac knowledging that caring for your children is about questioning the borders of Enframing rather than accepting its boundaries uncritically. I argue that experts, in order to provoke parents to care, ought to create space for ethical questions on how the Information and Communication Technology we once managed has come to manage us. (shrink)

Extended Reality (XR) and Large Language Model (LLM) technologies have the potential to significantly influence higher education practices and pedagogy in the coming years. As these emerging technologies reshape the educational landscape, it is crucial for educators and higher education professionals to understand their implications and make informed policy decisions for both individual courses and universities as a whole. -/- This paper has two parts. In the first half, we give an overview of XR technologies and their potential future role (...) in higher education. Then, we discuss the benefits and challenges of adopting and integrating XR technologies into higher education settings. Finally, we offer recommendations for educators, administrators, and policymakers on how to approach the adoption of this set of technologies and set institutional policy to take advantage of its benefits while minimizing its potential negative consequences. -/- In the paper’s second half, we discuss LLMs - specifically Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPTs). Again, we provide an overview of this rapidly developing technology and examine its unprecedented and potentially disruptive impact on higher education pedagogy. We delve into the benefits and limitations of GPTs, highlighting the pedagogical and ethical challenges they may pose. Finally, we present actionable recommendations for instructors and administrators at both the course level and the university-wide level to guide policy decisions concerning these transformative technologies. (shrink)

There are fundamental differences between the explanation of scientific change and the explanation of technological change. The differences arise from fundamental differences between scientific and technological knowledge and basic disanalogies between technological advance and scientific progress. Given the influence of economic markets and industrial and institutional structures on the development of technology, it is more plausible to regard technological change as a continuous and incremental process, rather than as a process of Kuhnian crises and revolutions.

Philosophers of science have in recent years presented arguments in favour of increasing cognitive diversity, diversity of social locations, and diversity of values and interests in science. Some of these arguments align with important aims in contemporary science policy. The policy aims have led to the development of institutional measures and instruments that are supposed to increase diversity in science and in the governance of science. The links between the philosophical arguments and the institutional measures have not gone unnoticed. Philosophers (...) have even explicitly suggested that institutional measures could be used to increase diversity in science. But philosophical criticisms of the existing institutional instruments have also been presented. Here I review some recent case studies in which philosophers examine actual attempts to increase diversity in science by using institutional measures implemented from the top down—attempts that have failed in one way or another. These studies examine attempts to involve citizens or stakeholders in the governance of science and technology and attempts to increase the number of interdisciplinary collaborations. They draw attention to the limitations of such instruments, calling into question the most optimistic visions of using institutional instruments to increase diversity in science. (shrink)

Converging Technologies, Shifting Boundaries Content Type Journal Article Pages 213-216 DOI 10.1007/s11569-009-0075-x Authors Tsjalling Swierstra, University of Twente Enschede Netherlands Marianne Boenink, University of Twente Enschede Netherlands B. Walhout, Rathenau Institute The Hague Netherlands R. Van Est, Rathenau Institute The Hague Netherlands Journal NanoEthics Online ISSN 1871-4765 Print ISSN 1871-4757 Journal Volume Volume 3 Journal Issue Volume 3, Number 3.

Debates concerning digital automation are mostly focused on the question of the availability of jobs in the short and long term. To counteract the possible negative effects of automation, it is often suggested that those at risk of technological unemployment should have access to retraining and reskilling opportunities. What is often missing in these debates are implications that all of this may have for individual autonomy understood as the ability to make and develop long-term plans. In this paper, I argue (...) that if digital automation becomes rapid, it will significantly undermine the legitimate expectation of stability and consequently, the ability to make and pursue long-term plans in the sphere of work. I focus on what is often taken to be one of the main long-term plans, i.e. the choice of profession, and I argue that this choice may be undermined by the pressure to continuously acquire new skills while at the same time facing a diminishing range of professions that one can choose from. Given that the choice of profession is significant for not-work related spheres of life, its undermining can greatly affect individual autonomy in these other spheres too. I argue that such undermining of individual planning agency constitutes a distinctive form of harm that necessitates a proactive institutional response. (shrink)

This paper discusses the introduction of fraudulent “molecular detector” technology into Mexico. The case is used to argue that contemporary science and technology studies’ approaches to scientific policy-making make basic assumptions about the societies they operate in that are inconsistent with the Mexican context. This paper also argues that contrary to what happens in the so-called Global North, the relative power of Mexican science in government and policy circles is as much limited by its relatively weak position as (...) much as it is by self-censorship and unrealized impact in the country’s fragile democracy. The case is also used to highlight the necessity for more politically involved scientific institutions in Mexico, as these become critical safeguards against incoming destabilizing technologies from more powerful nations into the local “peripheral” context. (shrink)

With rapidly expanding technological capacity, research has outpaced the existing infrastructure of ethical and regulatory guidance. In the area of incidental findings, this is particularly true.The regulations under which most Institutional Review Boards operate were established over 25 years ago and have not been substantially altered in the intervening years. The technology available today that creates the opportunity for IFs was not conceived of, or considered, in the crafting of those regulations. Therefore, little guidance can be derived directly from (...) these regulations. Rather, aspects of existing ethical guidance and regulations can be adapted to assist IRBs and researchers in dealing with issues surrounding IFs. (shrink)

Participatory Technology Assessment initiatives have usually been analyzed as if they existed in a social and political vacuum. This article analyzes the linkages that occur, in both directions, between the microcosm set up by a pTA exercise and the real world outside. This dual-dynamics perspective leads to a new way of understanding the function and significance of pTA initiatives. Rather than viewing them as a means to create the ideal conditions for real public debate, they are viewed here as (...) an additional public arena in which sociotechnical controversies are played out. This perspective is developed from the analysis of an interactive technology assessment exercise conducted by the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, on the topic of genetically modified vines. (shrink)

This article explores the possibility that John Dewey’s silence on the matter of which democratic means are needed to achieve democratic ends, while confusing, makes greater sense if we appreciate the notion of political technology from an anthropological perspective. Michael Eldridge relates the exchange between John Herman Randall, Jr., and Dewey in which Dewey concedes “that I have done little or nothing in this direction [of outlining what constitutes adequate political technology, but that] does not detract from my (...) recognition that in the concrete the invention of such a technology is the heart of the problem of intelligent action in political matters.” Dewey’s concession could be interpreted as an admission that he was unqualified to identify political machinery or institutions suitable for realizing his vision of democracy as a way of life. Not being able to specify adequate means to achieve lofty democratic ends is not problematic, though, if we appreciate the roots of Dewey’s work (especially Human Nature and Conduct) in the anthropological writings of Immanuel Kant and Franz Boas. For then experience reflects a myriad of social and cultural conditions such that specifying explicit means to structure that experience risks stymieing the organic development of political practice. When pressured to operationalize political technology, he chose the appropriately open-ended and, at times, frustratingly vague means of education and growth. In short, Dewey did not want his ambitious democratic vision to outstrip the possibilities of practice, so he left the task of specifying exact political technology (or which democratic means are best suited to achieve democratic ends) unfinished. (shrink)

Do science and technology create value for society and the economy, and how might one go about measuring it? How do we evaluate its benefits? Can we even be certain that there are benefits? Geisler argues that there are benefits, and that they outweigh in value the negative impacts that inevitably accompany them. His revolutionary new book goes on to show that they can also be measured and evaluated, and in one volume all of the existing knowledge on how (...) to do it is complied--then Geisler's own methods are offered. The result is a compelling argument that the value of science and technology in our lives has indeed been positive, and that the economic well-being of all individuals, organizations, and nations rests upon them. Geisler starts off by describing his conceptual framework for the evaluation of science and technology and the impact and benefits that proceed from them. He discusses the nature of evaluation in general terms, and then in the specific context of science, technology, and innovation together. He reviews the state of our present knowledge and assesses the nature of value creation itself. Throughout, Geisler remains fixed on his driving thesis: Although there are certainly some negative impacts from science and technology, on the whole the results of its outputs are positive. He shows how they have contributed to a range of activities and institutions, particularly to the improvement of health and human welfare worldwide. Finally, after discussing the theories of evaluation, he gets down to the practice, providing readers with a way to assess science and technological innovations for themselves. (shrink)

In Explaining Technology, Koppl et al. (2023) argue that “recombination is the essential driver of technological evolution” (p. 3). Modelling combinatorial innovation as a self-propelling, “autocatalytic” process raises the question of what explanatory role, if any, is left for institutional analysis. Although the authors grant institutions only an auxiliary explanatory role, they hint at the functional importance of market institutions, trade networks, patent law, and entrepreneurship. Our paper argues that institutions matter because they crucially affect aggregate levels and rates (...) of recombination and innovation, as well as shaping patterns of recombination and innovation that occur. This paper builds upon Koppl et al.’s acknowledgement of these institutional effects by integrating combinatorial evolution within recent developments in commons theory and institutional economics. Specifically, we argue the burgeoning literature on Governing Knowledge Commons offers a fruitful framework and body of empirical case studies that illuminates the diverse institutions individuals use to facilitate and steer combinatorial innovation. Whilst healthy institutional diversity may incentivize more recombination than any single monocentric institutional arrangement, the non-teleological aspect of recombination means that innovative processes can exude either productive, unproductive, or destructive effects. The institutional diversity fostered by flourishing knowledge commons may allow people to put combinatorial innovations into more productive uses while internalizing their complex externalities. At the same time, it may generate socio-cultural resistances to some forms of innovation processes. We illustrate our theory using cases related to several applied topics including intellectual property, competition policy, and the development of unmanned aerial vehicles. (shrink)