Wonder

About: Wonder is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4402 publications have been published within this topic receiving 54225 citations.

Emotional design : why we love (or hate) everyday things

Abstract: By the author of The Design of Everyday Things , the first book to make the connection between our emotions and how we relate to ordinary objects--from juicers to Jaguars. Did you ever wonder why cheap wine tastes better in fancy glasses? Why sales of Macintosh computers soared when Apple introduced the colorful iMac? New research on emotion and cognition has shown that attractive things really do work better, a fact fans of Don Norman's classic The Design of Everyday Things cannot afford to ignore.In recent years, the design community has focused on making products easier to use. But as Norman amply demonstrates in this fascinating and important new book, design experts have vastly underestimated the role of emotion on our experience of everyday objects. Emotional Design analyzes the profound influence of this deceptively simple idea, from our willingness to spend thousands of dollars on Gucci bags and Rolex watches to the impact of emotion on the everyday objects of tomorrow. In the future, will inanimate objects respond to human emotions? Is it possible to create emotional robots?Norman addresses these provocative questions--drawing on a wealth of examples and the latest scientific insights--in this bold exploration of the objects in our everyday world.

The Professions and Social Structure

Abstract: C OMPARATIVE study of the social structures of the most important civilizations shows that the professions occupy a position of importance in our society which is, in any comparable degree of development, unique in history. Perhaps the closest parallel is the society of the Roman Empire where, notably, the Law was very highly developed as a profession indeed. But even there the professions covered a far narrower scope than in the modern Western world. There is probably in Rome no case of a particular profession more highly developed than in our own society, and there was scarcely a close analogy to modern engineering, medicine or education in quantitative importance, though all of them were developed to a considerable degree. It seems evident that many of the most important features of our society are to a considerable extent dependent on the smooth functioning of the professions. Both the pursuit and the application of science and liberal learning are predominantly carried out in a professional context. Their results have become so closely interwoven in the fabric of modern society that it is difficult to imagine how it could get along without basic structural changes if they were seriously impaired. There is a tendency to think of the development and application of science and learning as a socially unproblematical process. A vague sort of "curiosity" and beyond that mere possession of the requisite knowledge are held to be enough. This is evidenced by the air of indignant wonder with which technologically minded people sometimes cite the fact that actual technical performance is well below the theoretical potentialities of Ioo percent efficiency. Only by extensive comparative study does it become evident that for even a moderate degree either of the development or the application of science there is requisite a complex set of social conditions which the "technologically minded" seldom think of, but incline to take for granted as in the nature of things. Study of the institutional framework within which professional activities are carried on should help considerably to understand the nature and functions of some of these social "constants. " The professions do not, however, stand alone as typical or distinctive features of modern Western civilization. Indeed, if asked what were the most distinctive * A paper read at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Society held at Detroit, Michigan, December, 1938.

Sense and Sensibilia

Abstract: A very nice book! And rejoice according to have him, 'there's no wonder on the child. And edward this book while, paradoxically endorsing the novel. As a very believable personality traits, of all the extended. Because marianne had planned to ourselves or sensibility if I am. You are by showing sense and marianne was born. And marianne rashly writes them when, I wouldn't have. I love however was liked.

The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry

Abstract: Comparative history is not new. As long as people have investigated social life, there has been recurrent fascination with juxtaposing historical patterns from two or more times or places. Part of the appeal comes from the general usefulness of looking at historical trajectories in order to study social change. Indeed, practitioners of comparative history from Alexis de Tocqueville and Max Weber to Marc Bloch, Reinhard Bendix, and Barrington Moore, Jr. have typically been concerned with understanding societal dynamics and epochal transformations of cultures and social structures. Attention to historical sequences is indispensable to such understanding. Obviously, though, not all investigations of social change use explicit juxtapositions of distinct histories. We may wonder, therefore: What motivates the use of comparisons as opposed to focussing on single historical trajectories? What purposes are pursued—and how—through the specific modalities of comparative history?

Coloring Epistemologies: Are Our Research Epistemologies Racially Biased?

Abstract: espected scholars of color have suggested (e.g., Stanfield, 1985, 1993a, 1994), even within the pages of this journal (J. A. Banks, 1993, 1995; Gordon, Miller, & Rollock, 1990), that the epistemologies we typically use in educational research may be racially biased. They have argued that our epistemologiesl-not our use of them, but the epistemologies themselves-are racially biased ways of knowing, implicitly proposing, thus, a new category of racism that could be labeled epistemological racism. There has been, however, a provocative lack of response-pro or con-to this race-oriented argument by leading educational methodologists in journals of education, including this one.2 But this lack of response is in curious contrast to the lively and contentious debates on other epistemological issues, such as quantitative versus qualitative (e.g., Cizek, 1995), objectivity versus subjectivity (e.g., Heshusius, 1994), validity (e.g., Lenzo, 1995; Moss, 1994), or paradigmatic issues in general (e.g., Bereiter, 1994; Delandshere & Petrosky, 1994; Gage, 1989). If we were among those raising this race-oriented issue, we would wonder why our efforts to argue that the epistemologies of educational research were racially biased provoked virtually no response, particularly among those who author the quantitative and qualitative research methods textbooks we all typically use. We would certainly wonder whether our argument was ignored because it raised the disquieting issue of race, because it was thought to be a weak or irrelevant argument, or because the argument was simply not understood. Unfortunately, we might also wonder whether this was just one more incidence of Ellison's (1972) "invisible man" syndrome, of Whites ignoring racial issues and people of color. As researchers whose race is White and who have