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Nanotechnology! Genetic engineering! Miracle Drugs! We are promised that new technological developments will magically save us from the dire consequences of the 300-year fossil-fueled binge known as modern industrial civilization, without demanding any fundamental changes in our behavior. There is a pervasive belief that technological innovation will enable us to continue our current lifestyle indefinitely and will prevent social, economic and environmental collapse. Techno-Fix shows that negative unintended consequences of technology are inherently predictable and unavoidable, techno-optimism is completely unjustified, and modern technology, in the presence of continued economic growth, does not promote sustainability, but hastens collapse. The authors demonstrate that most technological solutions to social and technology-created problems are ineffective. They explore the reasons for the uncritical acceptance of new technologies, show who really controls the direction of technological change, and then advocate extensive reform. This comprehensive exposé is a powerful argument for why we can and should put the genie back in the bottle. An insightful and powerful critique, it is required reading for anyone who is concerned about blind techno-optimism and believes that the time has come to make science and technology more socially and environmentally responsible. For more information, please visit technofix.org .
The term "technological fix" should mean a fix provided by technology--a solution for all of our problems, from medicine and food production to the environment and business. Instead, technological fix has come to mean a cheap, quick fix using inappropriate technology that usually creates more problems than it solves. This collection sets out the distinction between a technological fix and a true technological solution. Bringing together scholars from a variety of disciplines, the essays trace the technological fix as it has appeared throughout the twentieth century. Addressing such "fixes" as artificial hearts, industrial agriculture and climate engineering, these essays examine our need to turn to technology for solutions to all of our problems.
"We face the dual crises of peak oil and climate change. How will we meet future global energy demands? Goodall combines cutting-edge analysis and fascinating stories of the inventors, scientists, and entrepreneurs developing real-world technologies."--Back cover.
The award-winning author of The Net Delusion shows how the radical transparency we've become accustomed to online may threaten the spirit of real-life democracy
The practical implications of technical debt for the entire software lifecycle; with examples and case studies. Technical debt in software is incurred when developers take shortcuts and make ill-advised technical decisions in the initial phases of a project, only to be confronted with the need for costly and labor-intensive workarounds later. This book offers advice on how to avoid technical debt, how to locate its sources, and how to remove it. It focuses on the practical implications of technical debt for the entire software life cycle, with examples and case studies from companies that range from Boeing to Twitter. Technical debt is normal; it is part of most iterative development processes. But if debt is ignored, over time it may become unmanageably complex, requiring developers to spend all of their effort fixing bugs, with no time to add new features--and after all, new features are what customers really value. The authors explain how to monitor technical debt, how to measure it, and how and when to pay it down. Broadening the conventional definition of technical debt, they cover requirements debt, implementation debt, testing debt, architecture debt, documentation debt, deployment debt, and social debt. They intersperse technical discussions with "Voice of the Practitioner" sidebars that detail real-world experiences with a variety of technical debt issues.
Why an organization's response to digital disruption should focus on people and processes and not necessarily on technology. Digital technologies are disrupting organizations of every size and shape, leaving managers scrambling to find a technology fix that will help their organizations compete. This book offers managers and business leaders a guide for surviving digital disruptions—but it is not a book about technology. It is about the organizational changes required to harness the power of technology. The authors argue that digital disruption is primarily about people and that effective digital transformation involves changes to organizational dynamics and how work gets done. A focus only on selecting and implementing the right digital technologies is not likely to lead to success. The best way to respond to digital disruption is by changing the company culture to be more agile, risk tolerant, and experimental. The authors draw on four years of research, conducted in partnership with MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte, surveying more than 16,000 people and conducting interviews with managers at such companies as Walmart, Google, and Salesforce. They introduce the concept of digital maturity—the ability to take advantage of opportunities offered by the new technology—and address the specifics of digital transformation, including cultivating a digital environment, enabling intentional collaboration, and fostering an experimental mindset. Every organization needs to understand its “digital DNA” in order to stop “doing digital” and start “being digital.” Digital disruption won't end anytime soon; the average worker will probably experience numerous waves of disruption during the course of a career. The insights offered by The Technology Fallacy will hold true through them all. A book in the Management on the Cutting Edge series, published in cooperation with MIT Sloan Management Review.
An inside look at how schools throughout the United States are incorporating education technology in daily instruction.
A guide to understanding the inner workings and outer limits of technology and why we should never assume that computers always get it right. In Artificial Unintelligence, Meredith Broussard argues that our collective enthusiasm for applying computer technology to every aspect of life has resulted in a tremendous amount of poorly designed systems. We are so eager to do everything digitally—hiring, driving, paying bills, even choosing romantic partners—that we have stopped demanding that our technology actually work. Broussard, a software developer and journalist, reminds us that there are fundamental limits to what we can (and should) do with technology. With this book, she offers a guide to understanding the inner workings and outer limits of technology—and issues a warning that we should never assume that computers always get things right. Making a case against technochauvinism—the belief that technology is always the solution—Broussard argues that it's just not true that social problems would inevitably retreat before a digitally enabled Utopia. To prove her point, she undertakes a series of adventures in computer programming. She goes for an alarming ride in a driverless car, concluding “the cyborg future is not coming any time soon”; uses artificial intelligence to investigate why students can't pass standardized tests; deploys machine learning to predict which passengers survived the Titanic disaster; and attempts to repair the U.S. campaign finance system by building AI software. If we understand the limits of what we can do with technology, Broussard tells us, we can make better choices about what we should do with it to make the world better for everyone.
From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the “New Jim Code,” she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life. This illuminating guide provides conceptual tools for decoding tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we ourselves manufacture. Visit the book's free Discussion Guide: www.dropbox.com