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Author: Amy Sue Bix
Publisher:
Published: 2000
Total Pages: 398
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Amy Sue Bix locates the origins of such conflict in the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the country's social and economic crisis forced many Americans to re-examine ideas about science, technology, and progress."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Susan Currell
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 245
ISBN-13: 0812221257
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In The March of Spare Time, Susan Currell explores how and why leisure became an object of such intense interest, concern, and surveillance during the Great Depression. As Americans experienced record high levels of unemployment, leisure was thought by reformers, policy makers, social scientists, physicians, labor unions, and even artists to be both a cause of and a solution to society's most entrenched ills. Of all the problems that faced America in the 1930s, only leisure seemed to offer a panacea for the rest. The problem centered on divided opinions over what constituted proper versus improper use of leisure time. On the one hand, sociologists and reformers excoriated as improper such leisure activities as gambling, loafing, and drinking. On the other, the Works Progress Administration and the newly professionalized recreation experts promoted proper leisure activities such as reading, sports, and arts and crafts. Such attention gave rise to new ideas about how Americans should spend their free time to better themselves and their nation. These ideas were propagated in social science publications and proliferated into the wider cultural sphere. Films, fiction, and radio also engaged with new ideas about leisure, more extensively than has previously been recognized. In examining this wide spectrum of opinion, Currell offers the first full-scale account of the fears and hopes surrounding leisure in the 1930s, one that will be an important addition to the cultural history of the period.
Author: Dustin A. Abnet
Publisher:
Published: 2020
Total Pages: 385
ISBN-13: 022669271X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"As Dustin Abnet shows, the robot-whether automaton, Mechanical Turk, cyborg, or iPhone, whether humanized machine or mechanized human being-has long been a fraught embodiment of human fears. Abnet investigates, moreover, how the discourse of the robot has reinforced social and economic inequalities as well as fantasies of social control. "Robots" as a trope are not necessarily mechanical but are rather embodiments of quasi humanity, exhibiting a mix of human and nonhuman characteristics. Such figures are troubling to dominant discourses, which cannot easily assimilate them or identify salient boundaries. The robot lurks beneath the fears that fracture society"--
Author: Sarah-Jayne Blakemore
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2018-05-15
Total Pages: 256
ISBN-13: 1610397320
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A tour through the groundbreaking science behind the enigmatic, but crucial, brain developments of adolescence and how those translate into teenage behavior The brain creates every feeling, emotion, and desire we experience, and stores every one of our memories. And yet, until very recently, scientists believed our brains were fully developed from childhood on. Now, thanks to imaging technology that enables us to look inside the living human brain at all ages, we know that this isn't so. Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, one of the world's leading researchers into adolescent neurology, explains precisely what is going on in the complex and fascinating brains of teenagers--namely that the brain goes on developing and changing right through adolescence--with profound implications for the adults these young people will become. Drawing from cutting-edge research, including her own, Blakemore shows: How an adolescent brain differs from those of children and adults Why problem-free kids can turn into challenging teens What drives the excessive risk-taking and all-consuming relationships common among teenagers And why many mental illnesses--depression, addiction, schizophrenia--present during these formative years Blakemore's discoveries have transformed our understanding of the teenage mind, with consequences for law, education policy and practice, and, most of all, parents.
Author: Aaron Benanav
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2022-04-19
Total Pages: 161
ISBN-13: 1839761326
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A consensus-shattering account of automation technologies and their effect on workplaces and the labor market In this consensus-shattering account of automation technologies, Aaron Benanav investigates the economic trends that will shape our working lives far into the future. Silicon Valley titans, politicians, techno-futurists, and social critics have united in arguing that we are on the cusp of an era of rapid technological automation, heralding the end of work as we know it. But does the muchdiscussed “rise of the robots” really explain the long-term decline in the demand for labor? Automation and the Future of Work uncovers the deep weaknesses of twenty-first-century capitalism and the reasons why the engine of economic growth keeps stalling. Equally important, Benanav goes on to salvage from automation discourse its utopian content: the positive vision of a world without work. What social movements, he asks, are required to propel us into post-scarcity if technological innovation alone can’t deliver it? In response to calls for a permanent universal basic income that would maintain a growing army of redundant workers, he offers a groundbreaking counterproposal.
Author: Nicholas Carr
Publisher: Maven Publishing
Published: 2014-12-09
Total Pages: 282
ISBN-13: 9491845411
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In Het ondiepe liet Nicholas Carr ons zien wat internet met onze hersenen doet. In De glazen kooi opent hij ons de ogen voor een van de belangrijkste trends van het moment: de automatisering van onze samenleving. De voordelen liggen voor de hand, denk aan zelfrijdende auto’s, medische robots en gespecialiseerde apps. We geven taken uit handen aan machines, die het vaak sneller en beter kunnen en vervolgens hebben wij de vrijheid om onze tijd aan andere zaken te besteden. Volgens Nicholas Carr staat er echter veel op het spel: onze creativiteit en individuele talenten blijken op onverwachte manieren vervlochten met de taken die we uitbesteden. Wie alleen nog maar op zijn rekenmachine vertrouwt, zal wiskunde nooit echt goed begrijpen; wie alleen nog navigatiesoftware gebruikt, zal zijn richtingsgevoel kwijtraken. En het gaat nog veel verder dan rekenmachines en TomToms alleen. De talenten en vaardigheden van onze piloten, artsen, managers, docenten en politici veranderen op ingrijpende wijze als gevolg van automatisering. Technologie brengt ons veel goeds, maar het creëert ook een glazen kooi die ons beperkt. Dit najaar maakt Nicholas Carr deze kooi zichtbaar.
Author: Jerry Prout
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2022-07-15
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 1501764012
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Chasing Automation tells the story of how a group of reform-minded politicians during the heyday of America's industrial prowess (1921–1966) sought to plan for the technological future. Beginning with Warren G. Harding and the Conference he convened in 1921, Jerry Prout looks at how the US political system confronted the unemployment caused by automation. Both liberals and conservatives spoke to the crucial role of technology in economic growth and the need to find work for the unemployed, and Prout shows how their disputes turned on the means of achieving these shared goals and the barriers that stood in the way. This political history highlights the trajectories of two premier scientists of the period, Norbert Wiener and Vannevar Bush, who walked very different paths. Wiener began quietly developing his language of cybernetics in the 1920s though its effect would not be realized until the late 1940s. The more pragmatic Bush was tapped by FDR to organize the scientific community and his ultimate success—the Manhattan Project—is emblematic of the technological hubris of the era. Chasing Automation shows that as American industrial productivity dramatically increased, the political system was at the mercy of the steady advance of job replacing technology. It was the sheer unpredictability of technological progress that ultimately posed the most formidable challenge. Reformers did not succeed in creating a federal planning agency, but they did create a enduring safety net of laws that workers continue to benefit from today as we face a new wave of automation and artificial intelligence.
Author: Carroll Pursell
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2008-04-30
Total Pages: 480
ISBN-13: 0470695331
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A Companion to American Technology is a groundbreaking collection of original essays that analyze the hard-to-define phenomenon of “technology” in America. 22 original essays by expert scholars cover the most important features of American technology, including developments in automobiles, television, and computing Analyzes the ways in which technologies are organized, such as in the engineering profession, government, medicine and agriculture Includes discussions of how technologies interact with race, gender, class, and other organizing structures in American society
Author: Rudi Volti
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2011-10-11
Total Pages: 321
ISBN-13: 1483342417
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The Sociology of Work and Occupations, Second Edition connects work and occupations to the key subjects of sociological inquiry: social and technological change, race, ethnicity, gender, social class, education, social networks, and modes of organization. In 15 chapters, Rudi Volti succinctly but comprehensively covers the changes in the world of work, encompassing everything from gathering and hunting to working in today′s Information Age. This book introduces students to a highly relevant analysis of society today. In this new and updated edition, globalization and technology are each given their own chapter and discussed in great depth.
