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The atomic age was described as one that might soon end in the destruction of human civilization, but from the beginning, utopian images were attached to it as well. This book compares representations of nuclear power in popular media from around the world to to trace divergences, convergences, and exchanges.
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In Western countries conscientious objection is usually accommodated in various ways, at least in certain areas (military conscription, medicine) and to some extent. It appears to be regarded as fundamentally different from other kinds of objection. But why? This study argues that conscientious objection cannot be understood as long as conscience is misunderstood. The author provides a new interpretation of the historical development of expressions of conscience and thought on the subject, and offers a new approach to conscientious objection rooted in the symbol-approach to conscience.
This book examines the broad range of social and intellectualresponses to technology in the first four decades of this century, andsuggests that these responses set the terms that continue to governcontemporary debates. Starting around 1900, technology became a lively subject for debate among intellectuals, writers, and other opinion leaders. The expansion of the machine into ever more areas of social and economic life had led to a need to interpret its meanings in a more comprehensive way than in the past. World War I and its aftermath shifted the terms of this ongoing debate by underlining both the potential dangers of technology and its centrality to modern life. This book examines the br...
The culture of the modern world involves a sizeable and continuous use of energy. The story of energy as a part of modernity begins in the early 19th Century with hard work, experiments and the establishment of local energy systems. The natural conditions made certain by the alternation between light and dark, between warmth and cold, was gradually suspended by the introduction of electric lighting and heating into the home. The welfare state has significantly hastened this development to the degree that notions such as wellness and individual well-being have become natural elements of our consumer culture and our daily life. In most parts of the world we have light whenever we desire it, an...
How Taiwan rose to global prominence in high tech manufacturing, from computer maker to the world’s leading chip manufacturer. How did Taiwan, a former Japanese colony and the last fortress of the defeated Chinese Nationalists, ascend to such heights in high-tech manufacturing? In Island Tinkerers, Honghong Tinn tells the critical history of how hobbyists and enthusiasts in Taiwan, including engineers, technologists, technocrats, computer users, and engineers-turned-entrepreneurs, helped transform the country with their hands-on engagement with computers. Rather than engaging in wholesale imitation of US sources, she explains, these technologists tinkered with imported computing technology...
The Global Wireless charts a history of wireless beginning in the 1910s, when it was used as a tool for global communication, and ending as it declined and slowly fell from view. Located at a crossroads of media history and science and technology studies, The Global Wireless recounts how the advent of wireless technologies created a novel socio-technical problem: since radio signals easily and unwittingly crossed national borders, they challenged existing systems and standards of national media infrastructure control. The book further examines the political negotiations around the International Telecommunication Union, the growth of international communication networks, and the expansion of global media companies on the eve of World War I. The Global Wireless demonstrates that long before Wi-Fi and 5G, another wireless technology had already spread around the globe and prompted, in its wake, a radical reconsideration of networked communication and community. The Global Wireless should appeal to a broad range of readers, from specialists in the history of radio, technology, and global politics, to professionals and hobbyists in today's wireless and radio industries.
Investigations of how the global Cold War shaped national scientific and technological practices in fields from biomedicine to rocket science. The Cold War period saw a dramatic expansion of state-funded science and technology research. Government and military patronage shaped Cold War technoscientific practices, imposing methods that were project oriented, team based, and subject to national-security restrictions. These changes affected not just the arms race and the space race but also research in agriculture, biomedicine, computer science, ecology, meteorology, and other fields. This volume examines science and technology in the context of the Cold War, considering whether the new institu...