Showing papers in "Technology in Society in 2007"

TL;DR: This paper deals with fundamental change processes in socio-technical systems and offers a typology of changes based on a multi-level perspective of innovation: reproduction, transformation and transition.

TL;DR: In this paper, an approach for assessing indicators for the social sustainability of technical systems developed within a Swedish technology assessment tool called ORWARE is discussed, based on the concept of social sustainability.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the main and interactive effects of IT capability and human capital investment on five firm-performance measures, and they found that both IT capabilities and human resources contribute directly to the overall value-creation performance of banking firms.

TL;DR: The authors argue that society's understandings of environmental and public health threats are dangerously compromised by expert systems that create and legitimate those understandings, and they use the organization of environmental testing in Orleans Parish following Hurricane Katrina to illustrate these claims.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors consider the impossibilities, uncertainties and undefined relationships that may be involved in extending scientific and humanistic interest towards the development of nanosciences and nanotechnologies.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the productivity of this talent in the form of ideas can be raised by nurturing wikicapital-the capital arising from networks, and that the transition from innovation to commercially viable products requires the midwifery of many service providers and the entrepreneurship skills of firms small and large.

TL;DR: Wang et al. as mentioned in this paper discussed science and technology (S&T) reform in China by dividing the process into three stages, then explaining major policies and programs that play important roles in supporting reform, concluding that S&T reform has been effective in motivating universities and research institutes (URIs), building up the innovative capacities of enterprises, and promoting URI-industry linkages.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors proposed a strategic wireless framework to address challenges in three different economic sectors of a developing country: Tier I or metro economy, which is well-urbanized and integrated with the global economy; Tier II or sub-urban economy which has niche economic or development activities compared to Tier I; and Tier III or the rural economy, characterized by informal economic activity and poverty.

TL;DR: In this paper, the concept of vulnerability is defined as a function of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, and it is argued that to understand vulnerability requires an interdisciplinary approach, one that physical scientists, engineers, social scientists and humanists should work on collaboratively in order to reduce vulnerability in New Orleans.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss why the Dutch culture, although highly technological, remains vulnerable to flooding, with no apparent choice except to continue with its historically developed system for flood risk management.

TL;DR: In this paper, a transdisciplinary study on the agent network of nanotechnology in Switzerland reveals, among others, missing key agents, non-fulfillment of required functions, nonavailability of required knowledge, and deviations between self and cross-perception.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that solar thermal (ST) energy, using trough solar collectors, can be an environmentally friendly and economically competitive electric source for any part of the world (such as the USA) that includes large desert areas.

TL;DR: In this article, the development of information and communication technology (ICT) is usually measured by quantitative indices such as penetration rate, the qualities and characteristics of all countries can be different even if their achievements seem to be similar judging from quantitative standards.

TL;DR: This article found that the majority of senior citizens view advances in technology in a positive light, as they believe such advancements will produce a better quality of life for themselves and for society in general.

TL;DR: In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, concentrations of poverty and minority populations and disproportionate suffering among those groups prompted discussions about environmental injustices as discussed by the authors, but all too often they respond inadequately to long-standing injustices and fail to address the moral issues that underlie the public understanding of environmental justice.

TL;DR: A conceptual framework based on previous models of technology adoption is proposed, which involves IT planning, actual IT implementation, and IT diffusion in an academic environment, that of Portland Community College.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show how and when the perspectives are complementary by comparing how the theories conceptualise technology development, understand stakeholders, and determine driving forces for technological change, and argue that the two theories could be complementary tools for analysing the process.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyse the historical process that led to embedding water-flushing toilets in the Western world, and explore innovative developments connected to alternative toilet solutions that use less water.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the impact of the combination of nationalist rhetoric and technological development in a Third World country using the Indonesian aircraft industry during the New Order regime as its focus, and consider the ways in which nationalism becomes an impetus for technology development.

TL;DR: In this article, issues of environmental justice and historic preservation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans are examined in light of failures in after-disaster planning during the rebuilding of the city in the year following the storm.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present an analysis of Internet innovation in Vietnam and argue that one of the major reasons for the modest success is that Internet innovation policy is influenced more by ideo-political than socio-economic realism.

TL;DR: The New Orleans hurricane disaster of August 2005 amply illustrates the long-standing failure of relating science to effective policies for reducing flood losses as discussed by the authors, which derives from presumptions about the nature of science that can be corrected by employing a pragmatic perspective.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the role of the World Trade Organisation's Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement as a global regulatory device for nanotechnology, and questions the applicability of the Agreement with respect to current and future nanotechnology applications.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe some of the challenges of sustainability in coastal environments, and show how they are manifested in coastal environment, including the problems facing Venice and its lagoon, as a particularly interesting and complex example.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate empirical correlation and Granger causality between certain indicators of telecommunications activity and economic growth, such as total investment in the telecommunications sector and other parameters such as the penetration rate of services.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyzed the key factors involved in the choice of residential Internet service and found that socio-demographic factors strongly influence the adoption of Internet services, while price elasticity effects also vary between different types of households: those households with members who are wealthier and better educated are found to be less sensitive to the price of internet services than households whose member come from the other end of the socio-economic scale.

TL;DR: The authors argue that engineers tend to develop an instrumental attitude about those technologies with which they have the most expertize, and that this attitude is not necessarily reflective of a more general conscious adherence to an instrumentalist philosophy.

TL;DR: The authors locates the frequent call for public participation in the governance of technology within a theory of democratic representation, and examines several modes of representation (symbolic, formal, delegate, trustee, and descriptive) in light of their potential contribution to a democratic theory of publicly representative technology.

TL;DR: The history and possible future for human/robotic space flight is explored in this article. But the authors do not discuss the role of humans in space exploration. But they do suggest that it is conceivable that a post-human cyborg species may develop in a future extraterrestrial environment.

TL;DR: In this paper, the overall design of the engineering works that protect the City of New Orleans from major storm events is addressed, and the authors conclude that the design storm specified by congressionally authorized projects deserves reconsideration, and that engineering design reviews should be reorganized and implemented.