Showing papers on "Ingenuity published in 2000"

The Ingenuity Gap

Abstract: Through gripping narrative stories and incidents that exemplify his arguments, the author takes us on a world tour that begins with a heartstopping description of the tragic crash of United Airlines Flight 232 from Denver to Chicago and includes Las Vegas in ts desert, a wilderness beach in British Columbia, and his solitary search for a little girl in Patna, India. He shows how, in our complex world, while poor countries are particularly vulnerable to ingenuity gaps, our own rich countries are not immune, and we are caught dangerously between a soaring requirement for ingenuity and an increasingly uncertain supply. When the gap widens, political disintegration and violent upheaval can result, reaching into our own economies and daily lives in subtle ways. In compelling, lucid, prose, he makes real the problems we face and suggests how we might overcome them - in our own lives, our thing, our business and our societies.

Embedding Leadership in Civil Engineering Education

Abstract: Leadership is a key element in meeting the needs of the civil engineering profession in an era of heightened global competition. Consulting and construction executives intent on maintaining a competitive edge are calling upon educators to produce civil engineers capable of leading multidisciplinary teams, combining technical ingenuity with business acumen, and effectively communicating narrow engineering endeavors within a comprehensive social framework. Our industry is challenging undergraduate schools to broaden curricula beyond the intellectual endeavors of design and scientific inquiry to the greater domain of professional leadership. Many agree that formal leader development must be incorporated into engineering education programs to respond to the professional demands of practicing engineers; however, the means of achieving the objectives within tightly constrained curricula are debated. This paper explores the changing nature of civil engineering in a globally competitive environment, reviews the issues in realigning civil engineering education, identifies key leadership skills relevant to engineering, and proposes solutions for developing leaders at our undergraduate institutions.

The Modernization of Entrepreneurship

Abstract: The distinguishing "modern" features of industrial entrepreneurs, particularly in the early stages of industrialization are identified, along with the influences that brought those characteristics about. Defining the entrepreneur as one whose task it is to make decisions, it is argued that modern entrepreneurs required large amounts of fixed capital, regarded their jobs as lifelong commitments, and assumed a more scrupulous attitude toward their buyers than had earlier generations.Modern industry was based on an elaborate credit system and was inextricably linked to technological progress.Following a discussion of the characteristics of modern entrepreneurs, it is argued that modern industrialization (particularly in Europe) arose through developing areas' discoveries of "substitutions" for various prerequisites for industrial development.Human ingenuity always finds ways of bringing modern industrialization to the most "backward" countries. (SAA)

History of Telegraphy

Abstract: This book records the growth of telegraphy over two centuries, depicting the discoveries and ingenuity of the experimenters and engineers involved, the equipment they designed and built, and the organisation, applications and effects on society.

The Engines of Our Ingenuity: An Engineer Looks at Technology and Culture

Abstract: This book explores the very nature of creativity in ngineering and technology, and how it relates to creativity in art or science. Lienhard has for 10 years done a twice weekly radio show, consisting of three minute essays on technology. He uses the substance of selected segments of his radio programme to create a continuos narrative presenting his insights into technological creativity.

Quality in health care: medical or managerial?

Abstract: Explores the notion that the introduction of total quality management (TQM) in the public health care sector indicates a conceptual break with a tradition in which the authority to define and interpret the meaning of medical practice has been located solely within the medical profession. It also serves to shift the focus of medical practice away from its contextual and interactional character towards numerical representations and codification in monetary terms. Further, it is argued that the realization of management ideals in everyday practice is dependent more on the availability of pre‐existing technologies and standard procedures than on the ingenuity of particular organizational and institutional actors. These arguments are illustrated with the reutilization for TQM purposes of “local incident reports” in a Swedish hospital organization.

The human machine symbiosis

Abstract: One of the most precious assets any society has is the skill, ingenuity and creativity of its people. It is an asset which is sadly wasted world-wide. However, globalisation is requiring organisations to reconsider its significance. If through globalisation, large areas of the industrialised world will have the same World Class Technology, it must follow that a key competifive variable will be the skill and ingenuity with which people utilise the systems. Systems need to be designed in a human centred fashion in order to celebrate this human skill and ingenuity rather than reduce the individual to a passive machine appendage. In the paper, these aspects are discussed and suggestions are made in which direction to develop technology into the future

Environmental Values and Political Action(

Abstract: For several decades writers have posited a fundamental conflict between environmental protection and economic development. These arguments-linked to ideas of either an impending catastrophe (the environmentalist perspective) or human ingenuity and its capacity to deal with environmental threats through economic progress (the pro- development perspective)-have given rise to new political movements. This has prompted established political organisations to emphasise aspects of the environmentalist discourse (like preserving nature for future generations) and utilitarian arguments (like the recreational and aesthetic value of nature). Notions of sustainable development have been a pivotal feature of this response since they are founded on apparently conflicting values. This paper therefore uses recent survey research to explore the relationship between values (be they 'ecocentric' or pro-development or utilitarian) and political predispositions relating to the environment. The central findings relate to the s...

Sustainability and the Future of Humankind: Two Competing Theories of Infinite Substitutability

Abstract: Toward what kind of future is humankind now tending? Is human society engaged in a global gamble based on the assumption that technology, aided by human ingenuity and creativity, can remake the world and manage its resources for immediate material benefit to humanity without regard to natural law and the fate of other species? Infinite substitutability of species has been tested over evolutionary time, but infinite substitutability of resources is a relatively recent hypothesis based on a faith in human creativity and technological prowess. The choice made will affect both the future of human society and of many other species.

The Retrieval of a Legacy: Nineteenth-Century American Women Inventors

Abstract: Introduction The U.S. Patent System: A Framework of Legal Barriers Out of the Revolution: Seeds of Independent Invention Jacksonian Democracy: Yankee Ingenuity and the Self-Made Women? The Civil War: Impetus to Inventing Women National Reconstruction vs. Gender Construction American Progress: Celebrated Or Relegated? Conclusion Bibliography Index

A diplomat's diary, 1947-99 : China, India, and USA, the tantalising triangle

Abstract: In these stories young readers meets children whose lives are disrupted by disasters, whether man-made or natural. They will discover how tolerance, ingenuity and generosity can bring people together and build a foundation for mutual help and understanding.

Coded secrets cracked open

Abstract: Immediately after humans discovered writing, they must also have discovered that concealing information is almost as important as expressing it. They also learned that there is nothing more fascinating than other people's secrets. The ancient art of cryptography (code-making) has throughout history been matched against the ingenuity of cryptanalysts (code-breakers), sometimes in very dramatic circumstances. The battles of wits, intellects, cunning, mathematical prowess and, more recently, technology have made the history of cryptology so colourful that it is bound to appeal to everyone's imagination. It is a great story to tell, and Simon Singh, in The Code Book, tells it very well indeed.

Running the Gauntlet: Seventeenth-Century Literary Criticism

Abstract: theoretical and applied-than we presently allow. Sometimes it takes a deal of ingenuity to educe the critical implications from contexts at hand, and to appreciate their intellectual persistence. But at other times the evidence is in plain sight, in the introductions and prefaces to books and sermons and debates. These texts are what the following pageswith apologies for all the unfamiliar authors and titles cited-undertake

Mass distribution of ingenuity and choice [via the Internet]

Abstract: With another three to five years of exponential growth, the Internet will reach one billion people. At that scale, the Net will have a completely different audience: the world's current TV watchers, who are much less forgiving of service failures and exposed complexity. The Internet must emerge, ultimately, as a utility. Along the way, two powerful forces will shape the Net and the types of businesses that thrive there: the world as a global laboratory (where everyone will be able to see and build upon each other's innovations) and direct market adoption. Both phenomena concern the mass distribution of ingenuity and choice. This could result in chaos: with so many new ideas and so little global planning, the Net could become too cacophonous and disorganized to be useful to most people. To address this, the Net must increasingly adopt societal scaling mechanisms, such as context, community, intermediation and syndication.

Book Review: Academic Controversy: Enriching College Instruction through Intellectual Conflict

Abstract: "Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. If investigates invention. It shocks us out of sheeplike passivity and sets us at nothing and contriving....Conflict is a sine qua non of reflection and ingenuity." -- John Dewey. Conflict - the opposition of contraries - has long served as an essential component of learning and understanding in higher education. The deepest learning is almost always a confrontation between established beliefs and new ways of knowing, a friction of minds meeting.

Hardware and the Evolution of Technology: from 1946 to the Benchmarks of the 1990s: the Cars and Components

Abstract: Establishing an industry to supply the needs of motor sport competitors was a natural progression that called for flexibility, ingenuity and a fearless disregard for bank statements. It took decades, and the beginnings were not auspicious.