- Avatars of the Word
- James J. O'Donnell
- In this penetrating book, James O'Donnell takes a reading on the promise and the threat of electronic technology for our literate future. He reinterprets today's communication revolution through a series of refracted comparisons with earlier revolutionary periods: the transition from oral to written culture, from the papyrus scroll to the codex, from copied manuscript to print.
- Hardcover 1998 / Paperback 2000
- Biobazaar
- Janet Hope
- Can the open source approach do for biotechnology what it has done for information technology? Hope's book is the first sustained and systematic inquiry into the application of open source principles to the life sciences. Traversing disciplinary boundaries, she presents a careful analysis of intellectual property-related challenges confronting the biotechnology industry and then paints a detailed picture of "open source biotechnology" as a possible solution.
- Hardcover 2008
- Dominance by Design
- Michael Adas
- Long before the United States became a major force in global affairs, Americans believed in their superiority over others because of their inventiveness, productivity, and economic and social well-being. U.S. expansionists assumed a mandate to "civilize" non-Western peoples by demanding submission to American technological prowess and design. Michael Adas brilliantly pursues the history of this mission through America's foreign relations over nearly four centuries from North America to the Philippines, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf.
- Hardcover 2006
- Genethics
- David Suzuki
- Peter Knudtson
- Genethics is the most lucid and authoritative guide for general readers to modern genetic technology and the myriad ethical issues it raises.
- Hardcover 1989 / Paperback 1990
- Made to Break
- Giles Slade
- Made to Break is a history of twentieth-century technology as seen through the prism of obsolescence. Giles Slade explains how disposability was a necessary condition for America's rejection of tradition and our acceptance of change and impermanence. This book gives us a detailed and harrowing picture of how, by choosing to support ever-shorter product lives, we may well be shortening the future of our way of life as well.
- Hardcover 2006 / Paperback 2007
- Resources under Regimes
- Paul R. Josephson
- Democratic or authoritarian, every society needs clean air and water; every state must manage its wildlife and natural resources. In this provocative, comparative study, Josephson asks to what extent the form of a government and its economy--centrally planned or market, colonial or post-colonial--determines how politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, engineers, and industrialists address environmental and social problems presented by the transformation of nature into a humanized landscape.
- Hardcover 2005 / Paperback 2006