Silicon Valley Signals Technological Enthusiasm The Times

How might we account for the effectiveness of Silicon Valley during our times? Both as a place and as a cultural icon, Silicon Valley has generated a mystique about its power to produce economic and cultural effects. It speaks loudly in our civilization today and there is an aura of mystery about it. How has Silicon Valley arrived at this point in its development? Companies such as Apple, Google, Hewlett Packard,, and Intel compose part of the legend that Silicon Valley has become but the roots of that legend extend further in time and geography. Others have approached the same questions and have noted its industrial roots but only reached so far back. My contention is the modern economic and cultural phenomenon of Silicon Valley crystallized because of its local geomorphology and the ensuing technological enthusiasm contributed to its historical and material conditions for such techno mediatic unfolding. This work will distinguish itself from others not just by connecting geography to technical developments, but also by exploring the epistemological disposition that Silicon Valley claimed and spilled over into upcoming milieus of technological development and civilizational progress. By addressing the research questions through methods and concepts derived from Media Archeology methodology, a methodology originating in the field of Media Studies, I argue that the manifold inter-involvements of geomorphology and technical enthusiasm account for the force of Silicon Valley in media history, and the book takes you through various intersections of concrete pillars to build you a sound frame of mind about this mysterious region and culture.

Humans have always imagined better futures. From the desire to overcome death to the aspiration to dominion over the world, imaginations of the technological future reveal the commitments, values, and norms of those who construct them. Today, the human future is thrown into question by emerging technologies that promise radical control over human life and elicit corollary imaginations of human perfectibility. This interdisciplinary volume assembles scholars of science and technology studies, sociology, philosophy, theology, ethics, and history to examine imaginations of technological progress that promises to transcend the constraints of human body and being. Attending in particular to transhumanist and posthumanist visions, the volume breaks new ground by exploring their utopian and eschatological dimensions and situating them within a broader context of ideas, institutions, and practices of innovation. The volume invites specialists and general readers to explore the stakes of contemporary imaginations of technological innovation as a source of progress, a force of social and historical transformation, and as the defining essence of human life.

Now updated — A comprehensive, 500-year history of technology in society. Historian Thomas J. Misa's sweeping history of the relationship between technology and society over the past 500 years reveals how technological innovations have shaped—and have been shaped by—the cultures in which they arose. Spanning the preindustrial past, the age of scientific, political, and industrial revolutions, as well as the more recent eras of imperialism, modernism, and global security, this compelling work evaluates what Misa calls "the question of technology." In this edition, Misa brings his acclaimed text up to date by drawing on current scholarship while retaining sharply drawn portraits of individual people, artifacts, and systems. Each chapter has been honed to relate to contemporary concerns. Globalization, Misa argues, looks differently considering today's virulent nationalism, cultural chauvinism, and trade wars. A new chapter focuses on the digital age from 1990 to 2016. The book also examines how today's unsustainable energy systems, insecure information networks, and vulnerable global shipping have helped foster geopolitical risks and instability and takes a look at the coronavirus pandemic from the perspective of Wuhan, China's high-tech district. A masterful analysis of how technology and culture have influenced each other over five centuries, Leonardo to the Internet frames a history that illuminates modern-day problems and prospects faced by our technology-dependent world.

The Wiley Handbook of Global Educational Reform examines educational reform from a global perspective. Comprised of approximately 25 original and specially commissioned essays, which together interrogate educational reform from a critical global and transnational perspective, this volume explores a range of topics and themes that fully investigate global convergences in educational reform policies, ideologies, and practices. The Handbook probes the history, ideology, organization, and institutional foundations of global educational reform movements; actors, institutions, and agendas; and local, national, and global education reform trends. It further examines the “new managerialism” in global educational reform, including the standardization of national systems of educational governance, curriculum, teaching, and learning through the rise of new systems of privatization, accountability, audit, big-data, learning analytics, biometrics, and new technology-driven adaptive learning models. Finally, it takes on the subjective and intersubjective experiential dimensions of the new educational reforms and alternative paths for educational reform tied to the ethical imperative to reimagine education for human flourishing, justice, and equality. An authoritative, definitive volume and the first global take on a subject that is grabbing headlines as well as preoccupying policy makers, scholars, and teachers around the world Edited by distinguished leaders in the field Features contributions from an illustrious list of experts and scholars The Wiley Handbook of Global Educational Reform will be of great interest to scholars and graduate students of education throughout the world as well as the policy makers who can institute change.