Lucid and trenchant essays on the philosophy of nature, arguing for an attitude of respect rather than domination of the environment. We have, according to Leiss (communications, Simon Fraser U.), no obligation to accept the imposition of new technologies; but, even if we do accept technological innovation, we retain the right and duty to shape the applications and results according to our vision of the good society. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Social research study of the impact of technological change and Innovation on social change in the USA. Annotated bibliography pp. 96 to 124 and references.

It is a curious situation that technologies we now take for granted have, when first introduced, so often stoked public controversy and concern for public welfare. At the root of this tension is the perception that the benefits of new technologies will accrue only to small sections of society, while the risks will be more widely distributed. Drawing from nearly 600 years of technology history, Calestous Juma identifies the tension between the need for innovation and the pressure to maintain continuity, social order, and stability as one of today's biggest policy challenges. He reveals the extent to which modern technological controversies grow out of distrust in public and private institutions and shows how new technologies emerge, take root, and create new institutional ecologies that favor their establishment in the marketplace. Innovation and Its Enemies calls upon public leaders to work with scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs to manage technological change and expand public engagement on scientific and technological matters.

As insightful and wise today as it was when originally published in 1954, Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society has become a classic in its field, laying the groundwork for all other studies of technology and society that have followed. Ellul offers a penetrating analysis of our technological civilization, showing how technology—which began innocuously enough as a servant of humankind—threatens to overthrow humanity itself in its ongoing creation of an environment that meets its own ends. No conversation about the dangers of technology and its unavoidable effects on society can begin without a careful reading of this book. "A magnificent book . . . He goes through one human activity after another and shows how it has been technicized, rendered efficient, and diminished in the process.”—Harper's “One of the most important books of the second half of the twentieth-century. In it, Jacques Ellul convincingly demonstrates that technology, which we continue to conceptualize as the servant of man, will overthrow everything that prevents the internal logic of its development, including humanity itself—unless we take necessary steps to move human society out of the environment that 'technique' is creating to meet its own needs.”—The Nation “A description of the way in which technology has become completely autonomous and is in the process of taking over the traditional values of every society without exception, subverting and suppressing these values to produce at last a monolithic world culture in which all non-technological difference and variety are mere appearance.”—Los Angeles Free Press

JOHANN GOTSCHL Over the last decades, social philosophers, economists. sociologists, utility and game theorists, biologists, mathematicians, moral philosophers and philosophers have created totally new concepts and methods of understanding the function and role of humans in their modern societies. The years between 1953 and 1990 brought drastic changes in the scientific foundations and dynamic of today's society. A burst of entirely new, revolutionary ideas, similar to those which heralded the beginning of the twentieth century in physics, dominates the picture. This book also discusses the ongoing refutation of old concepts in the social sciences. Some of them are: the traditional concepts ofrationality, for example, based on maximization of interests, the linearity of axiomatic methods, methodological individualism, and the concept of a static society. Today the revolutionary change from a static view of our society to an evolutionary one reverberates through all social sciences and will dominate the twenty-first century. In an uncertain and risky world where cooperation and teamwork is getting more and more important, one cannot any longer call the maximization of one's own expectations of utility or interests "rational" .

Society and Technological Change is the best text available for undergraduate courses exploring the relationship between societal and technological change Brimming with Rudi Volti's expertise and enthusiasm for its dynamic subject, this always timely volume helps students grasp the vast societal implications of a wide range of technological breakthroughs, both historic and contemporary.