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  • Spar 10%
    av Caroline Acheatel
    342

    Essays and projects examine the ethical questions and moral tensions that arise during the ideation, development, completion, and aftermath of the architectural design process.In architecture, ethics are malleable. In theory, the terms are rigid, yet the reality is elastic. While much of the built environment is ostensibly designed for an individual client's needs, architecture's effects reverberate politically, environmentally, and culturally, often in unexpected ways and far beyond the limits of any parcel or project. This volume of Perspecta—the oldest and most distinguished student-edited architectural journal in the United States—considers the ethical questions and moral tensions that arise during the ideation, development, completion, and aftermath of the design process.Architecture operates on a temporal scale largely disconnected from social shifts. Although often bound up in power networks and funded by those who are most powerful, architecture has implicit obligations to those most vulnerable. Architecture's language, by making abstract concepts concrete, can reinforce or disrupt political, environmental, and social structures.Contributors from a range of geographies and practices offer insights, provocations, and questions about the dilemmas that architects encounter at every stage of designing the built environment: Whose architectural ideas get to become reality? What ethical role does form-making play in design? What moral burden must architects shoulder in the sheer act of building, and what is the future cost of today's refusal? Through arguments, essays, and projects that examine the issue at a range of scales—from the intimacy of a single material to the reach of global typology—Perspecta 53 explores the complex dynamics of architectural onus, and how designers can navigate conflicting agendas to pose new possibilities.

  • Spar 21%
    av Fabian Schar
    535

    An introduction to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology; a guide for practitioners and students.Bitcoin and blockchain enable the ownership of virtual property without the need for a central authority. Additionally, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies make up an entirely new class of assets that have the potential for fundamental change in the current financial system. This book offers an introduction to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology that begins from the perspective of monetary economics. The book first presents a nontechnical discussion of monetary theory, enabling readers to understand how cryptocurrencies are a radical departure from existing monetary instruments, and provides an overview of blockchain technology and the Bitcoin system. It then takes up technical aspects of Bitcoin in more detail, covering such topics as the Bitcoin network, its communications protocol, the mathematics underpinning decentralized validation, transaction types, the data structure of blocks, the proof-of-work consensus mechanism, and game theory. Finally, the book discusses specific issues and applications, including price volatility, regulatory uncertainty, and central bank cryptocurrencies, as well as such alternative applications as decentralized verification and attestation, tokens, and smart contracts. The concluding chapter offers practical advice on getting started with Bitcoin. End-of-chapter exercises allow readers to test their knowledge. Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Cryptoassets is suitable for classroom use and as a reference for practitioners.

  • Spar 23%
    - How Tech Companies are Profiling Us from Before Birth
    av Veronica Barassi
    348,-

    An examination of the datafication of family life--in particular, the construction of our children into data subjects.Our families are being turned into data, as the digital traces we leave are shared, sold, and commodified. Children are datafied even before birth, with pregnancy apps and social media postings, and then tracked through babyhood with learning apps, smart home devices, and medical records. If we want to understand the emergence of the datafied citizen, Veronica Barassi argues, we should look at the first generation of datafied natives: our children. In Child Data Citizen, she examines the construction of children into data subjects, describing how their personal information is collected, archived, sold, and aggregated into unique profiles that can follow them across a lifetime.

  • Spar 20%
    av Alice Gorman
    180

    A pioneering space archaeologist explores artifacts left behind in space and on Earth, from moon dust to Elon Musk''s red sports car.Alice Gorman is a space archaeologist: she examines the artifacts of human encounters with space. These objects, left behind on Earth and in space, can be massive (dead satellites in eternal orbit) or tiny (discarded zip ties around a defunct space antenna). They can be bold (an American flag on the moon) or hopeful (messages from Earth sent into deep space). They raise interesting questions: Why did Elon Musk feel compelled to send a red Tesla into space? What accounts for the multiple rocket-themed playgrounds constructed after the Russians launched Sputnik? Gorman—affectionately known as “Dr Space Junk” —takes readers on a journey through the solar system and beyond, deploying space artifacts, historical explorations, and even the occasional cocktail recipe in search of the ways that we make space meaningful.Engaging and erudite, Gorman recounts her background as a (nonspace) archaeologist and how she became interested in space artifacts. She shows us her own piece of space junk: a fragment of the fuel tank insulation from Skylab, the NASA spacecraft that crash-landed in Western Australia in 1979. She explains that the conventional view of the space race as “the triumph of the white, male American astronaut” seems inadequate; what really interests her, she says, is how everyday people engage with space. To an archaeologist, objects from the past are significant because they remind us of what we might want to hold on to in the future.

  • Spar 15%
    av Christof Koch
    252

    A thought-provoking argument that consciousness—more widespread than previously assumed—is the feeling of being alive, not a type of computation or a clever hack   In The Feeling of Life Itself, Christof Koch offers a straightforward definition of consciousness as any subjective experience, from the most mundane to the most exalted—the feeling of being alive. Psychologists study which cognitive operations underpin a given conscious perception. Neuroscientists track the neural correlates of consciousness in the brain, the organ of the mind. But why the brain and not, say, the liver? How can the brain—three pounds of highly excitable matter, a piece of furniture in the universe, subject to the same laws of physics as any other piece—give rise to subjective experience? Koch argues that what is needed to answer these questions is a quantitative theory that starts with experience and proceeds to the brain. In The Feeling of Life Itself, Koch outlines such a theory, based on integrated information.   Koch describes how the theory explains many facts about the neurology of consciousness and how it has been used to build a clinically useful consciousness meter. The theory predicts that many, and perhaps all, animals experience the sights and sounds of life; consciousness is much more widespread than conventionally assumed. Contrary to received wisdom, however, Koch argues that programmable computers will not have consciousness. Even a perfect software model of the brain is not conscious. Its simulation is fake consciousness. Consciousness is not a special type of computation—it is not a clever hack. Consciousness is about being.

  • av Ben Barres
    246

    A leading scientist describes his life, his gender transition, his scientific work, and his advocacy for gender equality in science.Ben Barres was known for his groundbreaking scientific work and for his groundbreaking advocacy for gender equality in science. In this book, completed shortly before his death from pancreatic cancer in December 2017, Barres (born in 1954) describes a life full of remarkable accomplishments—from his childhood as a precocious math and science whiz to his experiences as a female student at MIT in the 1970s to his female-to-male transition in his forties, to his scientific work and role as teacher and mentor at Stanford. Barres recounts his early life—his interest in science, first manifested as a fascination with the mad scientist in Superman; his academic successes; and his gender confusion. Barres felt even as a very young child that he was assigned the wrong gender. After years of being acutely uncomfortable in his own skin, Barres transitioned from female to male. He reports he felt nothing but relief on becoming his true self. He was proud to be a role model for transgender scientists.As an undergraduate at MIT, Barres experienced discrimination, but it was after transitioning that he realized how differently male and female scientists are treated. He became an advocate for gender equality in science, and later in life responded pointedly to Larry Summers''s speculation that women were innately unsuited to be scientists. Privileged white men, Barres writes, “miss the basic point that in the face of negative stereotyping, talented women will not be recognized.” At Stanford, Barres made important discoveries about glia, the most numerous cells in the brain, and he describes some of his work. “The most rewarding part of his job,” however, was mentoring young scientists. That, and his advocacy for women and transgender scientists, ensures his legacy.

  • Spar 17%
    - The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World
    av Robert D. Blackwill, Graham Allison & Ali Wyne
    236,-

    Grand strategist and founder of modern Singapore offers key insights and controversial opinions on globalization, geopolitics, economic growth, and democracy.

  • Spar 18%
    av Kat Holmes
    196

  • Spar 12%
    av Peter Dauvergne
    286,-

    Examining the potential benefits and risks of using artificial intelligence to advance global sustainability.Drones with night vision are tracking elephant and rhino poachers in African wildlife parks and sanctuaries; smart submersibles are saving coral from carnivorous starfish on Australia''s Great Barrier Reef; recycled cell phones alert Brazilian forest rangers to the sound of illegal logging. The tools of artificial intelligence are being increasingly deployed in the battle for global sustainability. And yet, warns Peter Dauvergne, we should be cautious in declaring AI the planet''s savior. In AI in the Wild, Dauvergne avoids the AI industry-powered hype and offers a critical view, exploring both the potential benefits and risks of using artificial intelligence to advance global sustainability.Dauvergne finds that corporations and states often use AI in ways that are antithetical to sustainability. The competition to profit from AI is entrenching technocratic management, revving up resource extraction, and turbocharging consumption, as consumers buy new smart devices (and discard their old, less-smart ones). Smart technology is helping farmers grow crops more efficiently, but also empowering the agrifood industry. Moreover, states are weaponizing AI to control citizens, suppress dissent, and aim cyberattacks at rival states. Is there a way to harness the power of AI for environmental and social good? Dauvergne argues for precaution and humility as guiding principles in the deployment of AI.

  • av Michael John Gorman
    342

    A provocative call for the transformation of science museums into “idea colliders” that spark creative collaborations and connections.Today''s science museums descend from the Kunst-und Wunderkammern of the Renaissance—collectors'' private cabinets of curiosities—through the Crystal Palace exhibition of 1851 to today''s “interactive” exhibits promising educational fun. In this book, Michael John Gorman issues a provocative call for the transformation of science museums and science centers from institutions dedicated to the transmission of cultural capital to dynamic “idea colliders” that spark creative collaborations and connections. This new kind of science museum would not stage structured tableaux of science facts but would draw scientists into conversation with artists, designers, policymakers, and the public. Rather than insulating visitors from each other with apps and audio guides, the science museum would consider each visitor a resource, bringing questions, ideas, and experiences from a unique perspective.Gorman, founder of the trailblazing Science Gallery, describes three scenarios for science museums of the future—the Megamuseum Mall, “the Cirque de Soleil of the science museum world”; the Cloud Chamber, a local space for conversations and co-creation; and the invisible museum, digital device-driven informal science learning. He discusses hybrids that experiment with science and art and science galleries that engage with current research, encouraging connection, participation and surprise. Finally, he identifies ten key shifts in the evolution of science museums, including those from large to small, from interactive to participatory, from enclosed to porous, and from subject-specific to cross-disciplinary.

  • Spar 16%
    av E. Bruce Goldstein
    308,-

    An accessible and engaging account of the mind and its connection to the brain.The mind encompasses everything we experience, and these experiences are created by the brain—often without our awareness. Experience is private; we can''t know the minds of others. But we also don''t know what is happening in our own minds. In this book, E. Bruce Goldstein offers an accessible and engaging account of the mind and its connection to the brain. He takes as his starting point two central questions—what is the mind? and what is consciousness?—and leads readers through topics that range from conceptions of the mind in popular culture to the wiring system of the brain. Throughout, he draws on the latest research, explaining its significance and relevance.Goldstein discusses how the mind has been described and studied since the nineteenth century, and surveys modern approaches to studying mind–brain connections; considers consciousness and how the nervous system creates experience; and explores the hidden mechanisms of the brain. Then, in the heart of the book, he focuses on one principle that holds across a wide range of the mind''s functions: prediction. All the behaviors and physiological processes associated with prediction—including eye movements, tactile sensation, language, music, memory, and social processes—involve communication between different places in the brain. The mind emerges not from the firing of neurons in one specialized area but from communications that travel across what Goldstein calls “highways of the mind.”

  • - Creating Products and Services for Better Health
    av Bon (Assistant Dean for Health & Design Ku
    241,-

    Applying the principles of human-centered design to real-world health care challenges, from drug packaging to early detection of breast cancer.This book makes a case for applying the principles of design thinking to real-world health care challenges. As health care systems around the globe struggle to expand access, improve outcomes, and control costs, Health Design Thinking offers a human-centered approach for designing health care products and services, with examples and case studies that range from drug packaging and exam rooms to internet-connected devices for early detection of breast cancer. Written by leaders in the field—Bon Ku, a physician and founder of the innovative Health Design Lab at Sidney Kimmel Medical College, and Ellen Lupton, an award-winning graphic designer and curator at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum—the book outlines the fundamentals of design thinking and highlights important products, prototypes, and research in health design.Health design thinking uses play and experimentation rather than a rigid methodology. It draws on interviews, observations, diagrams, storytelling, physical models, and role playing; design teams focus not on technology but on problems faced by patients and clinicians. The book's diverse case studies show health design thinking in action. These include the development of PillPack, which frames prescription drug delivery in terms of user experience design; a credit card-size device that allows patients to generate their own electrocardiograms; and improved emergency room signage. Drawings, photographs, storyboards, and other visualizations accompany the case studies.Copublished with Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

  • - The Politics of Infrastructure Security
    av Ryan (Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Ellis
    632,-

  • av David Gordon Wilson
    466

    The bicycle is almost unique among human-powered machines in that it uses human muscles in a near-optimum way. This new edition of the bible of bicycle builders and bicyclists provides just about everything you could want to know about the history of bicycles, how human beings propel them, what makes them go faster, and what keeps them from going even faster. The scientific and engineering information is of interest not only to designers and builders of bicycles and other human-powered vehicles but also to competitive cyclists, bicycle commuters, and recreational cyclists. The third edition begins with a brief history of bicycles and bicycling that demolishes many widespread myths. This edition includes information on recent experiments and achievements in human-powered transportation, including the "e;ultimate human- powered vehicle,"e; in which a supine rider in a streamlined enclosure steers by looking at a television screen connected to a small camera in the nose, reaching speeds of around 80 miles per hour. It contains completely new chapters on aerodynamics, unusual human-powered machines for use on land and in water and air, human physiology, and the future of bicycling. This edition also provides updated information on rolling drag, transmission of power from rider to wheels, braking, heat management, steering and stability, power and speed, and materials. It contains many new illustrations.

  • Spar 21%
    - How to Foster Creativity, Collaboration, and Inclusivity
    av Amit S. Mukherjee
    356,-

    The definitive book on leadership in the digital era: why digital technologies call for leadership that emphasizes creativity, collaboration, and inclusivity.

  • - Gigantism in Architecture and Digital Culture
    av Henriette (Associate Professor Steiner
    506,-

    A cultural history of gigantism in architecture and digital culture, from the Eiffel Tower to the World Trade Center.

  • Spar 11%
    av Wade Roush
    226

    Are we alone in the universe? If not, where is everybody? An engaging exploration of one of the most important unsolved problems in science.Everything we know about how planets form and how life arises suggests that human civilization on Earth should not be unique. We ought to see abundant evidence of extraterrestrial activity—but we don't. Where is everybody? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, science and technology writer Wade Roush examines one of the great unsolved problems in science: is there life, intelligent or otherwise, on other planets? This paradox (they're bound to be out there; but where are they?), first formulated by the famed physicist Enrico Fermi, has fueled decades of debate, speculation, and, lately, some actual science. Roush lays out the problem in its historical and modern-day context and summarizes the latest thinking among astronomers and astrobiologists. He describes the long history of speculation about aliens (we've been debating the idea for thousands of years); the emergence of SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) as a scientific discipline in the 1960s, and scientists' use of radio and optical techniques to scan for signals; and developments in astrobiology (the study of how life might arise in non-Earth like environments) and exoplanet research (the discovery of planets outside our solar system). Finally, he discusses possible solutions to the Fermi Paradox and suggests way to refocus SETI work that might increase the chances of resolving the paradox—and finding extraterrestrials.

  • - Loss Aversion and Game Design
    av Geoffrey Engelstein
    396

    How game designers can use the psychological phenomenon of loss aversion to shape player experience.Getting something makes you feel good, and losing something makes you feel bad. But losing something makes you feel worse than getting the same thing makes you feel good. So finding $10 is a thrill; losing $10 is a tragedy. On an "intensity of feeling” scale, loss is more intense than gain. This is the core psychological concept of loss aversion, and in this book game creator Geoffrey Engelstein explains, with examples from both tabletop and video games, how it can be a tool in game design. Loss aversion is a profound aspect of human psychology, and directly relevant to game design; it is a tool the game designer can use to elicit particular emotions in players. Engelstein connects the psychology of loss aversion to a range of phenomena related to games, exploring, for example, the endowment effect—why, when an object is ours, it gains value over an equivalent object that is not ours—as seen in the Weighted Companion Cube in the game Portal; the framing of gains and losses to manipulate player emotions; Deal or No Deal's use of the utility theory; and regret and competence as motivations, seen in the context of legacy games. Finally, Engelstein examines the approach to Loss Aversion in three games by Uwe Rosenberg, charting the designer's increasing mastery.

  • - An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design
    av University of Waterloo) Collins & Karen (Canada Research Chair
    493

    An examination of the many complex aspects of game audio, from the perspectives of both sound design and music composition.

  • Spar 17%
    - How Vigilant Leaders Thrive in an Era of Digital Turbulence
    av George S. (Geoffrey T. Boisi Professor Emeritus Day
    316,-

    How organizations can anticipate threats, spot opportunities, and act faster when the time is right; with rich examples including Adobe, MasterCard, and Amazon.When turbulence is the new normal, an organization's survival depends on vigilant leadership that can anticipate threats, spot opportunities, and act quickly when the time is right. In See Sooner, Act Faster, strategy experts George Day and Paul Schoemaker offer tools for thriving when digital advances intensify turbulence. Vigilant firms have greater foresight than their rivals, while vulnerable firms often miss early signals of external threats and organizational challenges. Charles Schwab, for example, was early to see and act on the promise of "robo-advisors”; Honeywell, on the other hand, stumbled when Nest Labs came out first with a "smart” thermostat. Day and Schoemaker show leaders how to assess their vigilance capabilities and cultivate insight and foresight throughout their organizations. They draw on a range of cases, including Adobe and Intuit's move to the cloud, Shell's investment in clean energy, and MasterCard's early recognition of digital challenges. Day and Schoemaker describe how to allocate the scarce resource of attention, how to detect weak signals and separate them from background noise, and how to respond strategically before competitors do. The challenge is not just to act faster but to act wisely, and the authors suggest ways to create dynamic portfolios of options. Finally, they offer an action agenda, with tips for fostering vigilance and agility throughout an organization. The rewards are stronger market positions, higher profits and growth, more motivated employees, and organization longevity.

  • - Peter van de Kamp and the Vanishing Exoplanets around Barnard's Star
    av Knowable Magazine) Wenz & John (Digital Producer
    306

    A fascinating account of the pioneering astronomer who claimed (erroneously) to have discovered a planet outside the solar system.

  • Spar 20%
    av Peter J. (Distinguished Professor/Chair of Computer Science) Denning
    180

    An introduction to computational thinking that traces a genealogy beginning centuries before the digital computer.A few decades into the digital era, scientists discovered that thinking in terms of computation made possible an entirely new way of organizing scientific investigation; eventually, every field had a computational branch: computational physics, computational biology, computational sociology. More recently, "computational thinking” has become part of the K-12 curriculum. But what is computational thinking? This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers an accessible overview, tracing a genealogy that begins centuries before digital computers and portraying computational thinking as pioneers of computing have described it. The authors explain that computational thinking (CT) is not a set of concepts for programming; it is a way of thinking that is honed through practice: the mental skills for designing computations to do jobs for us, and for explaining and interpreting the world as a complex of information processes. Mathematically trained experts (known as "computers”) who performed complex calculations as teams engaged in CT long before electronic computers. The authors identify six dimensions of today's highly developed CT—methods, machines, computing education, software engineering, computational science, and design—and cover each in a chapter. Along the way, they debunk inflated claims for CT and computation while making clear the power of CT in all its complexity and multiplicity.

  • - Shaping Technology with Moral Imagination
    av Batya (University of Washington) Friedman
    511,-

    Using our moral and technical imaginations to create responsible innovations: theory, method, and applications for value sensitive design.Implantable medical devices and human dignity. Private and secure access to information. Engineering projects that transform the Earth. Multigenerational information systems for international justice. How should designers, engineers, architects, policy makers, and others design such technology? Who should be involved and what values are implicated? In Value Sensitive Design, Batya Friedman and David Hendry describe how both moral and technical imagination can be brought to bear on the design of technology. With value sensitive design, under development for more than two decades, Friedman and Hendry bring together theory, methods, and applications for a design process that engages human values at every stage.After presenting the theoretical foundations of value sensitive design, which lead to a deep rethinking of technical design, Friedman and Hendry explain seventeen methods, including stakeholder analysis, value scenarios, and multilifespan timelines. Following this, experts from ten application domains report on value sensitive design practice. Finally, Friedman and Hendry explore such open questions as the need for deeper investigation of indirect stakeholders and further method development.This definitive account of the state of the art in value sensitive design is an essential resource for designers and researchers working in academia and industry, students in design and computer science, and anyone working at the intersection of technology and society.

  • Spar 11%
    av Lorraine (Max Planck Institute for History of Science) Daston
    226

    A pithy work of philosophical anthropology that explores why humans find moral orders in natural orders.Why have human beings, in many different cultures and epochs, looked to nature as a source of norms for human behavior? From ancient India and ancient Greece, medieval France and Enlightenment America, up to the latest controversies over gay marriage and cloning, natural orders have been enlisted to illustrate and buttress moral orders. Revolutionaries and reactionaries alike have appealed to nature to shore up their causes. No amount of philosophical argument or political critique deters the persistent and pervasive temptation to conflate the "is” of natural orders with the "ought” of moral orders.In this short, pithy work of philosophical anthropology, Lorraine Daston asks why we continually seek moral orders in natural orders, despite so much good counsel to the contrary. She outlines three specific forms of natural order in the Western philosophical tradition—specific natures, local natures, and universal natural laws—and describes how each of these three natural orders has been used to define and oppose a distinctive form of the unnatural. She argues that each of these forms of the unnatural triggers equally distinctive emotions: horror, terror, and wonder. Daston proposes that human reason practiced in human bodies should command the attention of philosophers, who have traditionally yearned for a transcendent reason, valid for all species, all epochs, even all planets.

  • Spar 10%
    av Dave Trumbore
    203,-

    All the science in Breaking Bad-from explosive experiments to acid-based evidence destruction-explained and analyzed for authenticity.

  • - Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet
    av Angelika Fitz
    464,-

    How architecture and urbanism can help to care for and repair a broken planet: essays and illustrated case studies.Today, architecture and urbanism are capital-centric, speculation-driven, and investment-dominated. Many cannot afford housing. Austerity measures have taken a disastrous toll on public infrastructures. The climate crisis has rendered the planet vulnerable, even uninhabitable. This book offers an alternative vision in architecture and urbanism that focuses on caring for a broken planet. Rooted in a radical care perspective that always starts from the given, in the midst of things, this edited collection of essays and illustrated case studies documents ideas and practices from an extraordinarily diverse group of contributors.Focusing on the three crisis areas of economy, ecology, and labor, the book describes projects including village reconstruction in China; irrigation in Spain; community land trust in Puerto Rico; revitalization of modernist public housing in France; new alliances in informal settlements in Nairobi; and the redevelopment of traditional building methods in flood areas in Pakistan. Essays consider such topics as ethical architecture, land policy, creative ecologies, diverse economies, caring communities, and the exploitation of labor. Taken together, these case studies and essays provide evidence that architecture and urbanism have the capacity to make the planet livable, again. Essays byMauro Baracco, Sara Brolund de Carvalho, Jane Da Mosto, Angelika Fitz, Hélène Frichot, Katherine Gibson, Mauro Gil-Fournier Esquerra, Valeria Graziano, Gabu Heindl, Elke Krasny, Lisa Law, Ligia Nobre, Meike Schalk, Linda Tegg, Ana Carolina Tonetti, Kim Trogal, Joan C. Tronto, Theresa Williamson, Louise WrightCase studiesaaa atelier d'architecture autogérée, Ayuntamiento BCN, Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury/Urbana, Cíclica [Space.Community.Ecology] + CAVAA arquitectes, Care+Repair Tandems Vienna (including Gabu Heindl, Zissis Kotionis + Phoebe Giannisi, rotor, Meike Schalk + Sara Brolund de Carvalho, Cristian Stefanescu, Rosario Talevi and many others), Colectivo 720, Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, EAHR Emergency Architecture & Human Rights, Fideicomiso de la Tierra del Caño Martín Peña CLT, Anna Heringer, Anupama Kundoo, KDI Kounkuey Design Initiative, Lacaton & Vassal, Yasmeen Lari, muf architecture/art, Paulo Mendes da Rocha + MMBB, RUF Rural Urban Framework, Studio Vlay Streeruwitz, De Vylder Vinck Taillieu, Xu Tiantian/DnA_Design and Architecture, ZUsammenKUNFT BerlinCopublished with Architekturzentrum Wien

  • Spar 13%
    - Societies without Hegemony or State
    av Hermann (Prof. Dr. Amborn
    196

    A study of communities in the Horn of Africa where reciprocity is a dominant social principle, offering a concrete countermodel to the hierarchical state.Over the course of history, people have developed many varieties of communal life; the state, with its hierarchical structure, is only one of the possibilities for society. In this book, leading anthropologist Hermann Amborn identifies a countermodel to the state, describing communities where reciprocity is a dominant social principle and where egalitarianism is a matter of course. He pays particular attention to such communities in the Horn of Africa, where nonhierarchical, nonstate societies exist within the borders of a hierarchical structured state. This form of community, Amborn shows, is not a historical forerunner to monarchy or the primitive state, nor is it obsolete as a social model. These communities offer a concrete counterexample to societies with strict hierarchical structures.Amborn investigates social forms of expression, ideas, practices, and institutions that oppose the hegemony of one group over another, exploring how conceptions of values and laws counteract tendencies toward the accumulation of power. He examines not only how the nonhegemonic ethos is reflected in law but also how anarchic social formations can exist. In the Horn of Africa, the autonomous jurisdiction of these societies protects against destructive outside influences, offers a counterweight to hegemonic violence, and contributes to the stabilization of communal life. In an era of widespread dissatisfaction with Western political systems, Amborn's study offers an opportunity to shift from traditional theories of anarchism and nonhegemony that project a stateless society to consider instead stateless societies already in operation.

  • - Wrestling with Bell's Theorem and the Ultimate Nature of Reality
    av George S. (Sidney Dillon Professor of Astronomy Greenstein
    248

    A physicist's efforts to understand the enigma that is quantum mechanics.Quantum mechanics is one of the glories of our age. The theory lies at the heart of modern society. Quantum mechanics is one of our most valuable forecasters—a "great predictor.” It has immeasurably altered our conception of the natural world. Its philosophical implications are earthshaking. But quantum mechanics steadfastly refuses to speak of many things; it deals in probabilities rather than giving explicit descriptions. It never explains. Einstein, one of its creators, considered the theory incomplete. Even now, many years after the creation of quantum mechanics, physicists continue to argue about it. Astrophysicist George Greenstein has been both fascinated and confused by quantum mechanics for his entire career. In this book, he describes, engagingly and accessibly, his efforts to understand the enigma that is quantum mechanics. The fastest route to the insight into the ultimate nature of reality revealed by quantum mechanics, Greenstein writes, is through Bell's Theorem, which concerns reality at the quantum level; and Bell's 1964 discovery drives Greenstein's quest. Greenstein recounts a scientific odyssey that begins with Einstein, continues with Bell, and culminates with today's push to develop an industry of quantum machines. Along the way, he discusses spin, entanglement, experimental metaphysics, and quantum teleportation, often with easy-to-grasp analogies. We have known for decades that the world of the quantum was strange, but, Greenstein says, not until John Bell came along did we know just how strange.

  •  
    581,-

    Investigating the concepts and material realities of energy coursing through the arts: a foundational text.This book investigates energies—in the plural, the energies embedded and embodied in everything under the sun— as they are expressed in the arts. With contributions from scholars and critics from the visual arts, art history, anthropology, music, literature, and the history of science, it offers the first multidisciplinary investigation of the concepts and material realities of energy coursing through the arts. Just as Douglas Kahn's earlier books helped introduce sound as a category for study in the arts, this new volume will be a foundational volume for future explorers in a largely uncharted domain. The modern concept of energy is only two hundred years old—an abstraction grounded in extraction—but this book takes a more expansive view. It opens with a clap: the sonic energies in a ceremony of the indigenous Goolarabooloo people of Australia. Other chapters explore the energies of photography; responses of artists in the early twentieth century—including Marcel Duchamp—to scientific discoveries in electricity and electromagnetism; the aestheticization of entropy in works by Hans Haacke and Robert Smithson; free-jazz musician Milford Graves's cross-cultural engagement with music, science, and spiritualism; energy field performance; and the self-generating energy of rumor and gossip as artwork. Contributors include such leading scholars as Linda Dalrymple Henderson, John Tresch, and Caroline A. Jones. Practicing artists and students of art history will find Energies in the Arts an essential work.ContributorsSusan Ballard, Jennifer Biddle, Marcus Boon, Joan Brassil, Steven Connor, Milford Graves, Daniel Hackbarth, Linda Dalrymple Henderson, Caroline A. Jones, Douglas Kahn, David Mather, Stephen Muecke, James Nisbet, Daniela Silvestrin, Michael Taussig, John Tresch, Melissa Warak

  • Spar 21%
    av Richard K. (Professor Larson
    636,-

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