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Author: Kate O'Neill
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: 2018-09-24
Total Pages: 268
ISBN-13: 9781719881562
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Technology drives the future we create. But are we steering that technology in directions that create that future in the best way, for the most people? In her new book
Author: Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities Anthony B Pinn
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Published: 2018-12-29
Total Pages: 256
ISBN-13: 9783319811031
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book interrogates the ways in which new technological advances impact the thought and practices of humanism. Chapters investigate the social, political, and cultural implications of the creation and use of advanced forms of technology, examining both defining benefits and potential dangers. Contributors also discuss technology's relationship to and impact on the shifting definitions we hold for humankind. International and multi-disciplinary in nature and scope, the volume presents an exploration of humanism and technology that is both racially diverse and gender sensitive. With great depth and self-awareness, contributors offer suggestions for how humanists and humanist organizations might think about and relate to technology in a rapidly changing world. More broadly, the book offers a critical humanistic interrogation of the concept of "progress" especially as it relates to technological advancement.
Author: Hannes Werthner
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: 2021-11-23
Total Pages: 342
ISBN-13: 3030861449
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This open access book aims to set an agenda for research and action in the field of Digital Humanism through short essays written by selected thinkers from a variety of disciplines, including computer science, philosophy, education, law, economics, history, anthropology, political science, and sociology. This initiative emerged from the Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism and the associated lecture series. Digital Humanism deals with the complex relationships between people and machines in digital times. It acknowledges the potential of information technology. At the same time, it points to societal threats such as privacy violations and ethical concerns around artificial intelligence, automation and loss of jobs, ongoing monopolization on the Web, and sovereignty. Digital Humanism aims to address these topics with a sense of urgency but with a constructive mindset. The book argues for a Digital Humanism that analyses and, most importantly, influences the complex interplay of technology and humankind toward a better society and life while fully respecting universal human rights. It is a call to shaping technologies in accordance with human values and needs.
Author: Braden R. Allenby
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2011-04-22
Total Pages: 235
ISBN-13: 0262294400
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A provocative analysis of what it means to be human in an era of incomprehensible technological complexity and change. In The Techno-Human Condition, Braden Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz explore what it means to be human in an era of incomprehensible technological complexity and change. They argue that if we are to have any prospect of managing that complexity, we will need to escape the shackles of current assumptions about rationality, progress, and certainty, even as we maintain a commitment to fundamental human values. Humans have been co-evolving with their technologies since the dawn of prehistory. What is different now is that we have moved beyond external technological interventions to transform ourselves from the inside out—even as we also remake the Earth system itself. Coping with this new reality, say Allenby and Sarewitz, means liberating ourselves from such categories as “human,” “technological,” and “natural” to embrace a new techno-human relationship. Contributors Boris Barbour, Mario Biagioli, Paul S. Brookes, Finn Brunton, Alex Csiszar, Alessandro Delfanti, Emmanuel Didier, Sarah de Rijcke, Daniele Fanelli, Yves Gingras, James R. Griesemer, Catherine Guaspare, Marie-Andrée Jacob, Barbara M. Kehm, Cyril Labbé, Jennifer Lin, Alexandra Lippman, Burkhard Morganstern, Ivan Oransky, Michael Power, Sergio Sismondo, Brandon Stell, Tereza Stöckelová, Elizabeth Wager, Paul Wouters
Author: Anthony B. Pinn
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2016-11-23
Total Pages: 246
ISBN-13: 3319317148
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book interrogates the ways in which new technological advances impact the thought and practices of humanism. Chapters investigate the social, political, and cultural implications of the creation and use of advanced forms of technology, examining both defining benefits and potential dangers. Contributors also discuss technology’s relationship to and impact on the shifting definitions we hold for humankind. International and multi-disciplinary in nature and scope, the volume presents an exploration of humanism and technology that is both racially diverse and gender sensitive. With great depth and self-awareness, contributors offer suggestions for how humanists and humanist organizations might think about and relate to technology in a rapidly changing world. More broadly, the book offers a critical humanistic interrogation of the concept of “progress” especially as it relates to technological advancement.
Author: Anthony B. Pinn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2021-07-27
Total Pages: 825
ISBN-13: 0190921560
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →While humanist sensibilities have played a formative role in the advancement of our species, critical attention to humanism as a field of study is a more recent development. As a system of thought that values human needs and experiences over supernatural concerns, humanism has gained greater attention amid the rapidly shifting demographics of religious communities, especially in Europe and North America. This outlook on the world has taken on global dimensions as well, with activists, artists, and thinkers forming a humanistic response not only to traditional religion, but to the pressing social and political issues of the 21st century. With in-depth, scholarly chapters, The Oxford Handbook of Humanism aims to cover the subject by analyzing its history, its philosophical development, its influence on culture, and its engagement with social and political issues. In order to expand the field beyond more Western-focused works, the Handook discusses humanism as a worldwide phenomenon, with regional surveys that explore how the concept has developed in particular contexts. The Handbook also approaches humanism as both an opponent to traditional religion as well as a philosophy that some religions have explicitly adopted. By both synthesizing the field, and discussing how it continues to grow and develop, the Handbook promises to be a landmark volume, relevant to both humanism and the rapidly changing religious landscape.
Author: Domenico Fiormonte
Publisher: punctum books
Published: 2015
Total Pages: 264
ISBN-13: 0692580441
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book offers a critical introduction to the core technologies underlying the Internet from a humanistic perspective. It provides a cultural critique of computing technologies, by exploring the history of computing and examining issues related to writing, representing, archiving and searching. The book raises awareness of, and calls for, the digital humanities to address the challenges posed by the linguistic and cultural divides in computing, the clash between communication and control, and the biases inherent in networked technologies. A common problem with publications in the Digital Humanities is the dominance of the Anglo-American perspective. While seeking to take a broader view, the book attempts to show how cultural bias can become an obstacle to innovation both in the methodology and practice of the Digital Humanities. Its central point is that no technological instrument is culturally unbiased, and that all too often the geography that underlies technology coincides with the social and economic interests of its producers. The alternative proposed in the book is one of a world in which variation, contamination and decentralization are essential instruments for the production and transmission of digital knowledge. It is thus necessary not only to have spaces where DH scholars can interact (such as international conferences, THATCamps, forums and mailing lists), but also a genuine sharing of technological know-how and experience. "This is a truly exceptional work on the subject of the digital....Students and scholars new to the field of digital humanities will find in this book a gentle introduction to the field, which I cannot but think would be good and perhaps even inspirational for them....Its history of the development of machines and programs and communities bent on using computers to advance science and research merely sets the stage for an insightful analysis of the role of the digital in the way both scholars and everyday people communicate and conceive of themselves and "others" in written forms - from treatises to credit card transactions." Peter Shillingsburg The Digital Humanist is not simply a translation of the Italian book L'umanista digitale (il Mulino 2010), but a new version tailored to an international audience through the improvement and expansion of the sections on social, cultural and ethical problems of the most widely used methodologies, resources and applications. TABLE OF CONTENTS // Preface: Digital Humanities at a Political Turn? by Geoffrey Rockwell / PART I: The Socio-Historical Roots - Chap. 1: Technology and the Humanities: A History of Interaction - Chap. 2: Internet, or The Humanistic Machine / PART II: Theoretical and Practical Dimensions - Chap. 3: Writing and Content Production - Chap. 4: Representing and Archiving - Chap. 5: Searching and Organizing / Conclusions: DH in a Global Perspective
Author: Harrison Fluss
Publisher: Anthem Press
Published: 2022-02-01
Total Pages: 258
ISBN-13: 1839980206
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Prometheus and Gaia examines the ideological positions of Futurism and Eco-Pessimism. While these are rarely spoken about in mainstream discourse, they do have strong resonances in today’s popular politics and culture. In light of existential threats posed by climate change, disruptive technologies and economic crises, many have grown weary of the “small fixes” offered by mainstream policy-makers. Radical change thus appears necessary, as Futurism and Eco-Pessimism emerge as two fundamental challenges to the status quo. The Futurist claims that the current dynamism of technology is incompatible with human limitations, while the Eco-Pessimist sees the climate crisis as symptomatic of a broader human domination over nature. What these seemingly opposite currents have in common is a shared rejection of the human frame as grounding politics; each seeks to subordinate the human in favor of a wholly alien other, either in the form of an anarchic nature or a dynamic technology. To transcend this strange coincidence of opposites, Prometheus and Gaia makes the positive case for a humanism that is rationalist without being anthropocentric.
Author: Marta Bertolaso
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: 2022-06-28
Total Pages: 254
ISBN-13: 303097054X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book provides an accessible and up to date overview of the foundational issues about both emerging constructive understandings of the digital era and still hidden and ignored aspects that could instead be dramatically relevant in the future, in the process of a technological humanism. The book offers relevant scientific and ethical questions bringing together professionals and researchers, from different professional and disciplinary fields, who have a shared interest in investigating operative aspects of technological, digital and cultural transitions of humans and their capacity of building human societies. The challenges are clear but there is a lack of an epistemological, anthropological, economic and social agenda that would enable a drive to such transitions towards a technological humanism. This book provides an ideal platform for professionals and scholars, not only providing tools for problem analysis, but also indicating shared directions, needs and objectives for a common goal; the creation of new scenarios instead of the creation of fears and manipulated social imaginaria.
Author: David Roden
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-10-10
Total Pages: 220
ISBN-13: 1317592328
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →We imagine posthumans as humans made superhumanly intelligent or resilient by future advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science. Many argue that these enhanced people might live better lives; others fear that tinkering with our nature will undermine our sense of our own humanity. Whoever is right, it is assumed that our technological successor will be an upgraded or degraded version of us: Human 2.0. Posthuman Life argues that the enhancement debate projects a human face onto an empty screen. We do not know what will happen and, not being posthuman, cannot anticipate how posthumans will assess the world. If a posthuman future will not necessarily be informed by our kind of subjectivity or morality the limits of our current knowledge must inform any ethical or political assessment of that future. Posthuman Life develops a critical metaphysics of posthuman succession and argues that only a truly speculative posthumanism can support an ethics that meets the challenge of the transformative potential of technology.
