Category Archives: TechnoScience & Technoscientism

Swarm and Fuzzy | Newsweek

When the first human colonists land on Mars several decades from now, their habitat will already be waiting. They may not even have to don a space suit, instead simply walking down the gangplank in their civvies into a warm, … Continue reading

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Transistors that wrap around tissues and morph with them | KurzweilAI

Electronic devices that become soft when implanted inside the body and can deploy to grip 3-D objects, such as large tissues, nerves and blood vessels have been created by researchers from The University of Texas at Dallas and the University … Continue reading

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Multiverse Controversy Heats Up – Scientific American

The multiverse is one of the most divisive topics in physics, and it just became more so. The major announcement last week of evidence for primordial ripples in spacetime has bolstered a cosmological theory called inflation, and with it, some … Continue reading

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Scientist proposes revolutionary naming system for all life on Earth

A Virginia Tech researcher has developed a new way to classify and name organisms based on their genome sequence and in doing so created a universal language that scientists can use to communicate with unprecedented specificity about all life on … Continue reading

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Simulations back up theory that Universe is a hologram : Nature News & Comment

In 1997, theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena proposed1 that an audacious model of the Universe in which gravity arises from infinitesimally thin, vibrating strings could be reinterpreted in terms of well-established physics. The mathematically intricate world of strings, which exist in … Continue reading

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▶ Is Futurama the Best Argument Against Transhumanism? | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios – YouTube

▶ Is Futurama the Best Argument Against Transhumanism? | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios – YouTube.

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▶ Are Memes & Internet Culture Creating a Singularity? | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios – YouTube

 

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Science’s rightful place is in service of society | Dan Sarewitz

Science policy must concentrate less on how much money is spent, and more on how to translate investments into public good via Science’s rightful place is in service of society : Nature News & Comment.

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Developing indicators of the impact of scholarly communication is a massive technical challenge – but it’s also much simpler than that | Impact of Social Sciences

Developing indicators of the impact of scholarly communication is a massive technical challenge – but it’s also much simpler than that | Impact of Social Sciences.

Posted in Accountability, Broader Impacts, CSID Publications, Field Philosophy, institutionalizing interdisciplinarity, Libraries, Metrics, Peer Review, Science and technology ramifications, STEM Policy, TechnoScience & Technoscientism | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Harvard Faculty Request Faculty Oversight of HarvardX Their Usage of edX |e-Literate

Interesting reaction by Harvard’s Faculty of Arts & Sciences especially in light of the letter from the San Jose Philosophy Faculty directed to a member of the Harvard FAS. Harvard Faculty Request Faculty Oversight of HarvardX Their Usage of edX … Continue reading

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Scholars Sound the Alert From the ‘Dark Side’ of Tech Innovation – Technology – The Chronicle of Higher Education

Academics talking amongst themselves? Scholars Sound the Alert From the ‘Dark Side’ of Tech Innovation – Technology – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

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Book Review: Humanity 2.0: What it Means to be Human Past, Present and Future | LSE Review of Books

Francis Remedios offers his review of Steve Fuller’s Humanity 2.0. Book Review: Humanity 2.0: What it Means to be Human Past, Present and Future | LSE Review of Books.

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The ‘Broader Impacts’ of Sequestration on Science

CSID Director Bob Frodeman has some suggestions about the interconnection of research & society in post-austerity world. Now that we’ve been driven off the “fiscal cliff,” perhaps we should look around and assess the results. It turns out that sequestration … Continue reading

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Knowing and acting: The precautionary and proactionary principles in relation to policy making, J. Britt Holbrook and Adam Briggle « Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective

The Social Epistemology Review and Reply collective is now hosting preprints: Knowing and acting: The precautionary and proactionary principles in relation to policy making, J. Britt Holbrook and Adam Briggle « Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective. Yes! Adam and … Continue reading

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U. of California faculty union says MOOCs undermine professors’ intellectual property | Inside Higher Ed

What’s really interesting to me about this article is that the issue of competing interests of faculty as individuals and as a collective is raised, but not really explored. We need an account of something like group autonomy. U. of … Continue reading

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Open Access, the Impact Agenda and resistance to the neoliberal paradigm | Impact of Social Sciences

Yesterday’s post introduced the context of neoliberalism as the backdrop of change in higher education. Here Martin Eve provides further clarification of the neoliberal context, linking the impact agenda under the Research Excellence Framework as a key trait of a privatised … Continue reading

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Does technological liberation have to come at a price?

A good read from Evgeny Morozov at the WSJ: Are Smart Gadgets Making Us Dumb? Once we step into this magic space, we are surrounded by video cameras that recognize whatever ingredients we hold in our hands. Tiny countertop robots inform … Continue reading

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Influential few predict behaviour of the many : Nature News & Comment

To completely understand how a living organism works one would have to take it apart, the great physicist Niels Bohr once observed — but then the organism would certainly be dead1. In general, systems of high complexity, including living things … Continue reading

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After Kyoto: Special Issue of NATURE

On 1 January 2013, the world can go back to emitting greenhouse gases with abandon. The pollution-reduction commitments that nations made as part of the Kyoto Protocol will expire, leaving the planet without any international climate regulation and uncertain prospects … Continue reading

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America’s secret fracking war – Salon.com

There’s a war going on that you know nothing about between a coalition of great powers and a small insurgent movement.  It’s a secret war being waged in the shadows while you go about your everyday life. In the end, … Continue reading

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Climate Change & the Research Scientist

Does this make an argument for moving elite research centers–for which the Federal government & corporations pay out an enormous amount of money over many years–to areas that will be less physically hit by global warming… in like, I don’t know, North … Continue reading

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Galaxy formation: The new Milky Way : Nature News & Comment

Astronomers are still arguing about the precise sequence of events during the Milky Way’s birth, but every-one agrees that the story began with dark matter. The stuff is everywhere, even though it is invisible and no one yet knows what … Continue reading

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The Religiosity of the Fracking Debate

CSID Faculty Fellow Adam Briggle publishes at Science Progress: The debate over hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and the shale gas revolution it has spawned has a religious aura to it. Both sides have an unshakeable conviction that fracking is either … Continue reading

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We love to call new technologies “creepy.” – Slate Magazine

Evan Selinger with another article in Slate: Facial recognition software, targeted advertising: We love to call new technologies “creepy.” – Slate Magazine. The warning: don’t let “creepy” become crutch for not thinking things through. In other words, think before you … Continue reading

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Sometimes science must give way to religion : Nature News & Comment

CSID Senior Fellow Dan Sarewitz has another piece out in Nature that’s sure to cause a stir: Sometimes science must give way to religion : Nature News & Comment. Here’s The New York Times: “The Higgs boson is the only … Continue reading

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