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Black Boxing
In science studies, the social process of blackboxing is based on the abstract notion of a black box. To cite Bruno Latour, blackboxing is "the way scientific and technical work is made invisible by its own success. When a machine runs efficiently, when a matter of fact is settled, one need focus only on its inputs and outputs and not on its internal complexity. Thus, paradoxically, the more science and technology succeed, the more opaque and obscure they become." Overview Social constructivist approaches to science and technology studies, such as social construction of technology (SCOT) often revolve around "opening the black box", or attempting to understand the internal workings of a given system. This allows the investigator to find what empirical models of technical change that explain the specific events forming the technology. The social constructivist conception of black boxing doesn't delineate the physical components hidden inside an apparent whole; rather, what is blac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science Studies
Science studies is an interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary research area that seeks to situate scientific expertise in broad social, historical, and philosophical contexts. It uses various methods to analyze the production, representation and reception of scientific knowledge and its epistemology, epistemic and semiotics, semiotic role. Similarly to cultural studies, science studies are defined by the subject of their research and encompass a large range of different theoretical and methodological perspectives and practices. The interdisciplinary approach may include and borrow methods from the humanities, natural and formal sciences, from scientometrics to ethnomethodology or cognitive science. Science studies have a certain importance for evaluation and science policy. Overlapping with the field of science, technology and society, practitioners study the relationship between science and technology, and the interaction of expert and lay knowledge in the public realm. Sco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Box
In science, computing, and engineering, a black box is a system which can be viewed in terms of its inputs and outputs (or transfer characteristics), without any knowledge of its internal workings. Its implementation is "opaque" (black). The term can be used to refer to many inner workings, such as those of a transistor, an engine, an algorithm, the human brain, or an institution or government. To analyze an open system with a typical "black box approach", only the behavior of the stimulus/response will be accounted for, to infer the (unknown) ''box''. The usual representation of this "black box system" is a data flow diagram centered in the box. The opposite of a black box is a system where the inner components or logic are available for inspection, which is most commonly referred to as a white box (sometimes also known as a "clear box" or a "glass box"). History The modern meaning of the term "black box" seems to have entered the English language around 1945. In electroni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bruno Latour
Bruno Latour (; ; 22 June 1947 – 9 October 2022) was a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist.Wheeler, Will. ''Bruno Latour: Documenting Human and Nonhuman Associations'' Critical Theory for Library and Information Science. Libraries Unlimited, 2010, p. 189. He was especially known for his work in the field of science and technology studies (STS). After teaching at the École des Mines de Paris ( Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation) from 1982 to 2006, he became professor at Sciences Po Paris (2006–2017), where he was the scientific director of the Sciences Po Medialab. He retired from several university activities in 2017. He was also a Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics. Latour is best known for his books '' We Have Never Been Modern'' (1991; English translation, 1993), ''Laboratory Life'' (with Steve Woolgar, 1979) and '' Science in Action'' (1987).Heather Vidmar-McEwe"Anthropologists biographies: Bruno Latour" "Anthropologists biographies ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The press maintains offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Harvard Square, and in London, England. The press co-founded the distributor TriLiteral LLC with MIT Press and Yale University Press. TriLiteral was sold to LSC Communications in 2018. Notable authors published by HUP include Eudora Welty, Walter Benjamin, E. O. Wilson, John Rawls, Emily Dickinson, Stephen Jay Gould, Helen Vendler, Carol Gilligan, Amartya Sen, David Blight, Martha Nussbaum, and Thomas Piketty. The Display Room in Harvard Square, dedicated to selling HUP publications, closed on June 17, 2009. Related publishers, imprints, and series HUP owns the Belknap Press imprint (trade name), imprint, which it inaugurated in May 1954 with the publication of the ''Harvard Guide to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the most populous city in the county, the List of municipalities in Massachusetts, fourth-largest in Massachusetts behind Boston, Worcester, Massachusetts, Worcester, and Springfield, Massachusetts, Springfield, and List of cities in New England by population, ninth-most populous in New England. The city was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England, which was an important center of the Puritans, Puritan theology that was embraced by the town's founders. Harvard University, an Ivy League university founded in Cambridge in 1636, is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Lesley University, and Hult Inte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Constructivist
Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives from the Latin word ''socii'' ("allies"). It is particularly derived from the Italian ''Socii'' states, historical allies of the Roman Republic (although they rebelled against Rome in the Social War of 91–87 BC). Social theorists In the view of Karl Marx,Morrison, Ken. ''Marx, Durkheim, Weber. Formations of modern social thought'' human beings are intrinsically, necessarily and by definition social beings who, beyond being "gregarious creatures", cannot survive and meet their needs other than through social co-operation and association. Their social characteristics are therefore to a large extent an objectively given fact, stamped on them from birth and affirmed by socialization processes; and, according to Marx, in producing and reproduci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Construction Of Technology
Social construction of technology (SCOT) is a theory within the field of science and technology studies. Advocates of SCOT—that is, social constructivists—argue that technology does not determine human action, but that rather, human action shapes technology. They also argue that the ways a technology is used cannot be understood without understanding how that technology is embedded in its social context. SCOT is a response to technological determinism and is sometimes known as technological constructivism. SCOT draws on work done in the constructivist school of the sociology of scientific knowledge, and its subtopics include actor-network theory (a branch of the sociology of science and technology) and historical analysis of sociotechnical systems, such as the work of historian Thomas P. Hughes. Its empirical methods are an adaptation of the Empirical Programme of Relativism (EPOR), which outlines a method of analysis to demonstrate the ways in which scientific findings ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tesla, Inc
Tesla, Inc. ( or ) is an American multinational automotive and clean energy company. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, it designs, manufactures and sells battery electric vehicles (BEVs), stationary battery energy storage devices from home to grid-scale storage, grid-scale, solar panels and solar shingles, and related products and services. Tesla was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning as Tesla Motors. Its name is a tribute to inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla. In February 2004, Elon Musk led Tesla's first funding round and became the company's chairman; in 2008, he was named chief executive officer. In 2008, the company began production of its first car model, the Tesla Roadster (first generation), Roadster sports car, followed by the Tesla Model S, Model S sedan in 2012, the Tesla Model X, Model X SUV in 2015, the Tesla Model 3, Model 3 sedan in 2017, the Tesla Model Y, Model Y crossover in 2020, the Tesla Semi truck in 2022 and th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lithium Mining
Lithium (from , , ) is a chemical element; it has symbol Li and atomic number 3. It is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal. Under standard conditions, it is the least dense metal and the least dense solid element. Like all alkali metals, lithium is highly reactive and flammable, and must be stored in vacuum, inert atmosphere, or inert liquid such as purified kerosene or mineral oil. It exhibits a metallic luster. It corrodes quickly in air to a dull silvery gray, then black tarnish. It does not occur freely in nature, but occurs mainly as pegmatitic minerals, which were once the main source of lithium. Due to its solubility as an ion, it is present in ocean water and is commonly obtained from brines. Lithium metal is isolated electrolytically from a mixture of lithium chloride and potassium chloride. The nucleus of the lithium atom verges on instability, since the two stable lithium isotopes found in nature have among the lowest binding energies per nucleon of all ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uber
Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides Ridesharing company, ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and operates in approximately 70 countries and 15,000 cities worldwide. It is the largest ridesharing company worldwide with over 150 million monthly active users and 6 million active drivers and couriers. It coordinates an average of 28 million trips per day, and has coordinated 47 billion trips since its inception in 2010. In 2023, the company had a take rate (revenue as a percentage of gross bookings) of 28.7% for mobility services and 18.3% for food delivery. History In 2009, Garrett Camp, a co-founder of StumbleUpon, came up with the idea to create Uber to make it easier and cheaper to procure direct transportation. Camp and Travis Kalanick had spent $800 hiring a private driver on New Year's Eve, which they deemed excessive, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Actor–network Theory
Actor–network theory (ANT) is a theoretical and methodological approach to social theory where everything in the social and natural worlds exists in constantly shifting networks of relationships. It posits that nothing exists outside those relationships. All the factors involved in a social situation are on the same level, and thus there are no external social forces beyond what and how the network participants interact at present. Thus, objects, ideas, processes, and any other relevant factors are seen as just as important in creating social situations as humans. ANT holds that social forces do not exist in themselves, and therefore cannot be used to explain social phenomena. Instead, strictly empirical analysis should be undertaken to "describe" rather than "explain" social activity. Only after this can one introduce the concept of social forces, and only as an abstract theoretical concept, not something which genuinely exists in the world. Although it is best known for it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michel Callon
Michel Callon (born 1945) is a professor of sociology at the École des mines de Paris and member of the Centre de sociologie de l'innovation. He is an author in the field of Science and Technology Studies and one of the leading proponents of actor–network theory (ANT) with Bruno Latour. Works Callon’s earlier works on sociology of science and on '' translation '' contributed to the study of how scientists act to problematize an issue, interest other actors and recruit them as to mobilize a constituency around an issue. His article ''Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay'' is one of the most cited in the literature of Science and Technology Studies Science and technology studies (STS) or science, technology, and society is an interdisciplinary field that examines the creation, development, and consequences of science and technology in their historical, cultural, and social contexts. Histo .... ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
