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This book shows the advantages of using different perspectives and scientific backgrounds for developing support technologies that are integrated into daily life. It highlights the interaction between people and technology as a key factor for achieving this integration and discusses relevant methods, concepts, technologies, and applications suitable for interdisciplinary exchange and collaboration. The relationship between humans and technology has become much more inclusive and interdependent. This generates a number of technical, ethical, social, and practical issues. By gathering contributions from scholars from heterogeneous research fields, such as biomechanics, various branches of engineering, the social sciences, information science, psychology, and philosophy, this book is intended to provide answers to the main questions arising when support technologies such as assistance systems, wearable devices, augmented reality, and/or robot-based systems are constructed, implemented, interfaced and/or evaluated across different application contexts.
This new Yearbook addresses the question of how policy, place, and organization are made to matter for a new research field to emerge. Bringing together leading historians, sociologists, and organizational researchers on science and technology, the volume answers this question by offering in-depth case studies and comparative perspectives on multiple research fields in their nascent stage, including molecular biology and materials science, nanotechnology, and synthetic biology. The Yearbook brings to bear the lessons of constructivist ethnography and the “practice turn” in Science and Technology Studies (STS) more broadly on the qualitative, comparative, and critical inquiry of new research fields. In doing so, it offers unprecedented insights into the complex interplay of national research policies, regional clusters, particular research institutions, and novel research practices in and for any emerging field of (techno-)science. It systematically investigates national and regional differences, including the variable mobilization of such differences, and probes them for organizational topicality and policy relevance.
The title of the book derives from the theme of the 20th Conference on Applied Social Sciences of the Professional Association of German Sociologists, held in Munich in May 2019. The question of what concrete contributions social innovations can make to the transition to forms of sustainable coexistence and economic activity is as much the focus of this book as the question of what contribution the social sciences can make. Thus, on the one hand, it is about concrete social innovations that help us to achieve the goal of living and doing business sustainably, but on the other hand, it is also about the way in which the social sciences - not least through appropriate theoretical and methodological training - can be made socially responsible for the success of such socially innovative processes. This book is a translation of an original German edition. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation.
The following anthology delivers sound analysis to the theoretical classification of the current societal phenomenon - between innovative, world changing and yet disruptive technology, as well as societal and cultural transformation. Lifelogging, digital self-tracking and the real-time chronicling of man’s lifetime, is not only a relevant societal topic in the world of research and academic science these days, but can also be found in literature, cultural pages of the written press and the theatre. The spectrum of Lifelogging ranges from sleep, mood, sex and work logging to Thing and Deathlogging. This leads to several questions: How does one live in a data society? Is “measured” man automatically also “better” man? And if so, what is the cost? Do new categories of reality or principles of social classification develop as a result of Lifelogging? How does the “social view” on things change? The authors in this anthology provide insightful answers to these pressing questions.
Studies challenging the idea that technology and science flow only from global North to South. The essays in this volume study the creation, adaptation, and use of science and technology in Latin America. They challenge the view that scientific ideas and technology travel unchanged from the global North to the global South—the view of technology as “imported magic.” They describe not only alternate pathways for innovation, invention, and discovery but also how ideas and technologies circulate in Latin American contexts and transnationally. The contributors' explorations of these issues, and their examination of specific Latin American experiences with science and technology, offer a br...
Interactive adaptive systems increasingly become part of our everyday life. Which factors could shape this development and under which conditions will interactions with technical systems be deemed socially appropriate? The "FActors of Social Appropriateness" (FASA) Model presented in this Open Access-book provides a structured approach to our understanding of social appropriateness in human-technology interaction. The FASA Model serves to inform design choices for sociosensitive and socioactive artificial assistants.
Die Beiträge des Buches befassen sich mit der Frage, was ‚Gesellschaft‘ bedeutet, wenn nahezu alle Lebensbereiche assistiert werden. Ob Blindenhund, Butler oder Assistent der Geschäftsführung, Herzschrittmacher oder Navigationssystem, Pflegeroboter oder Ambient Assisted Living - wir werden assistiert von anderen Personen und Lebewesen, und immer häufiger auch von Technologien und Artefakten. Diesen Assistenten kommt eine spezifische und neue Rolle zu: sie beschützen, sie helfen, sie steuern uns. Prozesse der Assistierung in Lebens- und Arbeitswelt werden oft im Einklang mit sich steigernden Kompensations- und Effizienzversprechen vorangetrieben. Aber wie gestaltet sich Assistenz konkret? Welche Wechselwirkungen entstehen zwischen den beteiligten Instanzen? Und welche gesellschaftlichen Dynamiken und unbeabsichtigten Folgen sind damit verbunden? Darauf versucht der Sammelband Antworten zu geben.
The Material Culture of Basketry celebrates basketry as a culturally significant skilled practice and as a theoretically rich discipline which has much to offer contemporary society. While sometimes understudied and underappreciated, it has much in common with mathematics and engineering, art, craft and design, and can also act as a socially beneficial source of skill and care. Contributors show how local knowledge of materials, plants and place are central to the craft. Case studies include the skill in weaverbird nest building (challenging how we perceive learning in craft and nature), an engineer's perspective on twining Peruvian grass bridges, and the local knowledge embodied in Pacific ...
An examination of nanotechnology as a lens through which to study contemporary democracy in both theory and practice. In Democratic Experiments, Brice Laurent discusses the challenges that emerging technologies create for democracy today. He focuses on nanotechnology and its attendant problems, proposing nanotechnology as a lens through which to understand contemporary democracy in both theory and practice. Arguing that democracy is at stake where nanotechnology is defined as a problem, Laurent examines the sites where nanotechnology is discussed and debated by scientists, policymakers, and citizens. It is at these sites where the joint production of nanotechnology and the democratic order c...
The booming increase of the senior population has become a social phenomenon and a challenge to our societies, and technological advances have undoubtedly contributed to improve the lives of elderly citizens in numerous aspects. In current debates on technology, however, the »human factor« is often largely ignored. The ageing individual is rather seen as a malfunctioning machine whose deficiencies must be diagnosed or as a set of limitations to be overcome by means of technological devices. This volume aims at focusing on the perspective of human beings deriving from the development and use of technology: this change of perspective - taking the human being and not technology first - may help us to become more sensitive to the ambivalences involved in the interaction between humans and technology, as well as to adapt technologies to the people that created the need for its existence, thus contributing to improve the quality of life of senior citizens.