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The Mantra Of Efficiency


The Mantra Of Efficiency
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The Mantra Of Efficiency


The Mantra Of Efficiency
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Author : Jennifer Karns Alexander
language : en
Publisher: JHU Press
Release Date : 2008-03-03

The Mantra Of Efficiency written by Jennifer Karns Alexander and has been published by JHU Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2008-03-03 with Business & Economics categories.


Winner, 2010 Edelstein Prize, Society for the History of Technology Efficiency—associated with individual discipline, superior management, and increased profits or productivity—often counts as one of the highest virtues in Western culture. But what does it mean, exactly, to be efficient? How did this concept evolve from a means for evaluating simple machines to the mantra of progress and a prerequisite for success? In this provocative and ambitious study, Jennifer Karns Alexander explores the growing power of efficiency in the post-industrial West. Examining the ways the concept has appeared in modern history—from a benign measure of the thermal economy of a machine to its widespread application to personal behaviors like chewing habits, spending choices, and shop floor movements to its controversial use as a measure of the business success of American slavery—she argues that beneath efficiency's seemingly endless variety lies a common theme: the pursuit of mastery through techniques of surveillance, discipline, and control. Six historical case studies—two from Britain, one each from France and Germany, and two from the United States—illustrate the concept's fascinating development and provide context for the meanings of, and uses for, efficiency today and in the future.



The Mantra Of Efficiency


The Mantra Of Efficiency
DOWNLOAD
Author : Jennifer Karns Alexander
language : en
Publisher: JHU Press
Release Date : 2008-03-03

The Mantra Of Efficiency written by Jennifer Karns Alexander and has been published by JHU Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2008-03-03 with Technology & Engineering categories.


Winner, 2010 Edelstein Prize, Society for the History of Technology Efficiency—associated with individual discipline, superior management, and increased profits or productivity—often counts as one of the highest virtues in Western culture. But what does it mean, exactly, to be efficient? How did this concept evolve from a means for evaluating simple machines to the mantra of progress and a prerequisite for success? In this provocative and ambitious study, Jennifer Karns Alexander explores the growing power of efficiency in the post-industrial West. Examining the ways the concept has appeared in modern history—from a benign measure of the thermal economy of a machine to its widespread application to personal behaviors like chewing habits, spending choices, and shop floor movements to its controversial use as a measure of the business success of American slavery—she argues that beneath efficiency's seemingly endless variety lies a common theme: the pursuit of mastery through techniques of surveillance, discipline, and control. Six historical case studies—two from Britain, one each from France and Germany, and two from the United States—illustrate the concept's fascinating development and provide context for the meanings of, and uses for, efficiency today and in the future.



Modernism And The Culture Of Efficiency


Modernism And The Culture Of Efficiency
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Author : Evelyn Cobley
language : en
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Release Date : 2009-01-01

Modernism And The Culture Of Efficiency written by Evelyn Cobley and has been published by University of Toronto Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2009-01-01 with Literary Criticism categories.


Cobley's close readings of modernist British fiction by writers as diverse as Aldous Huxley, Joseph Conrad, and E.M. Forster identify characters whose attitudes and behaviour patterns indirectly manifest cultural anxieties that can be traced to the conflicted logic of efficiency.



Small Medium Large


Small Medium Large
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Author : Colleen A. Dunlavy
language : en
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Release Date : 2024-08-15

Small Medium Large written by Colleen A. Dunlavy and has been published by John Wiley & Sons this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2024-08-15 with History categories.


We live in a world of seemingly limitless consumer choice. Yet, as every shopper knows without thinking about it, many everyday goods – from beds to batteries to printer paper – are available in a finite number of “standard sizes.” What makes these sizes “standard” is an agreement among competing firms to make or sell products with the same limited dimensions. But how did firms – often hotly competing firms – reach such collective agreements? In exploring this question, Colleen Dunlavy puts the history of mass production and distribution in an entirely new light. She reveals that, despite the widely publicized model offered by Henry Ford, mass production techniques did not naturally diffuse throughout the U.S. economy. On the contrary, formidable market forces blocked their diffusion. It was only under the cover of collectively agreed-upon, industrywide standard sizes – orchestrated by the federal government – that competing firms were able to break free of market forces and transition to mass production and distribution. Without government promotion of standard sizes, the twentieth-century American variety of capitalism would have looked markedly less “Fordist.” Small, Medium, Large will make all of us think differently about the everyday consumer choices we take for granted.



Steps Toward A Philosophy Of Engineering


Steps Toward A Philosophy Of Engineering
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Author : Carl Mitcham
language : en
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Release Date : 2019-12-06

Steps Toward A Philosophy Of Engineering written by Carl Mitcham and has been published by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2019-12-06 with Philosophy categories.


The rise of classic Euro-American philosophy of technology in the 1950s originally emphasized the importance of technologies as material entities and their mediating influence within human experience. Recent decades, however, have witnessed a subtle shift toward reflection on the activity from which these distinctly modern artifacts emerge and through which they are engaged and managed, that is, on engineering. What is engineering? What is the meaning of engineering? How is engineering related to other aspects of human existence? Such basic questions readily engage all major branches of philosophy --- ontology, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics --- although not always to the same degree. The historico-philosophical and critical reflections collected here record a series of halting steps to think through engineering and the engineered way of life that we all increasingly live in what has been called the Anthropocene. The aim is not to promote an ideology for engineering but to stimulate deeper reflection among engineers and non-engineers alike about some basic challenges of our engineered and engineering lifeworld.



The Information Society


The Information Society
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Author : Robert Hassan
language : en
Publisher: Polity
Release Date : 2008-11-03

The Information Society written by Robert Hassan and has been published by Polity this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2008-11-03 with Computers categories.


What are we to make of the information society? Many prominent theorists have argued it to be the most profound and comprehensive transformation of economy, culture and politics since the rise of the industrial way of life in the 18th century. Some saw its arrival in a positive light, where the dreams of democracy, of ‘connectivity’ and ‘efficiency’ constituted a break with the old ways. But other thinkers viewed it more in terms of the recurrent nightmare of capitalism, where the processes of exploitation, commodification and alienation are given much freer rein than ever before. In this book Robert Hassan, a prominent theorist in new media and its effects, analyses and critically appraises these positions and forms them into a coherent narrative to illuminate the phenomenon. Surveying the works of major information society theorists from Daniel Bell to Nicholas Negroponte, and from Vincent Mosco to Manuel Castells, The Information Society is an invaluable resource for understanding the nature of the information society—as well as the meta-processes of neoliberal globalisation and the revolution in information technologies that made it possible.



Engineering Identities Epistemologies And Values


Engineering Identities Epistemologies And Values
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Author : Steen Hyldgaard Christensen
language : en
Publisher: Springer
Release Date : 2015-05-30

Engineering Identities Epistemologies And Values written by Steen Hyldgaard Christensen and has been published by Springer this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2015-05-30 with Philosophy categories.


This second companion volume on engineering studies considers engineering practice including contextual analyses of engineering identity, epistemologies and values. Key overlapping questions examine such issues as an engineering identity, engineering self-understandings enacted in the professional world, distinctive characters of engineering knowledge and how engineering science and engineering design interact in practice. Authors bring with them perspectives from their institutional homes in Europe, North America, Australia\ and Asia. The volume includes 24 contributions by more than 30 authors from engineering, the social sciences and the humanities. Additional issues the chapters scrutinize include prominent norms of engineering, how they interact with the values of efficiency or environmental sustainability. A concluding set of articles considers the meaning of context more generally by asking if engineers create their own contexts or are they created by contexts. Taken as a whole, this collection of original scholarly work is unique in its broad, multidisciplinary consideration of the changing character of engineering practice.



The Beauty Of Detours


The Beauty Of Detours
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Author : Yoni Van Den Eede
language : en
Publisher: SUNY Press
Release Date : 2019-12-01

The Beauty Of Detours written by Yoni Van Den Eede and has been published by SUNY Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2019-12-01 with Philosophy categories.


Proposes an innovative, holistic understanding of technology. The Beauty of Detours proposes a new way of understanding and defining technology by reading systems thinker Gregory Bateson in the framework of contemporary philosophy of technology. Although “technology” was not an explicit focus of Bateson’s oeuvre, Yoni Van Den Eede shows that his thought is permeated with insights directly relevant to contemporary technological concerns. This book provides a systematic reading of Bateson that reveals these under-investigated elements of his thought. It also critiques the field of philosophy of technology for still reifying “technology” too much despite its attempt to de-reify it, arguing instead that it should incorporate Bateson’s insights and focus more on processes of human knowing. Sketching a Batesonian philosophy of technology, Van Den Eede calls for greater attentiveness to the purpose of technology and its role in our lives. “This book offers a thorough and well-researched dive into Bateson’s thinking on purpose, instrumentalism, technology, and epistemology. It is an important contribution to the discourse on AI and on the rapid development of the tech sector. Philosophically the book tackles difficult systemic questions about technology and addresses them at a much more sophisticated level than most books of its kind.” — Nora Bateson, The International Bateson Institute



Professionals And Policy


Professionals And Policy
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Author : Mike Bottery
language : en
Publisher: Routledge
Release Date : 2013-09-13

Professionals And Policy written by Mike Bottery and has been published by Routledge this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2013-09-13 with Business & Economics categories.


By means of case studies in schools and hospitals, this text describes and evaluates the current issues faced by both education and health professionals. It argues that much can be learned by comparing the experiences of the two groups, and suggests ways in which education and health workers can respond positively to the changes of recent years to ensure that essential services are maintained and improved.



The Product Of Medicine


The Product Of Medicine
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Author : Caitjan Gainty
language : en
Publisher: Duke University Press
Release Date : 2025-03-07

The Product Of Medicine written by Caitjan Gainty and has been published by Duke University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2025-03-07 with History categories.


In The Product of Medicine, Caitjan Gainty traces the history of the early twentieth-century medical efficiency movement in the United States, restoring it as a significant driver of medicine’s modernization while also revealing its broader significance as a cultural force shaping modern American life. Covering a range of efficiency’s uses in medicine—from the assembly-line structure of the early Mayo Clinic and Henry Ford Hospital to the landmark Flexner Report and the prosecution of the American Medical Association as a monopoly—Gainty challenges long-standing presumptions about how medicine acquired power and prestige during the Progressive Era. Gainty demonstrates how, rather than as a result of pathbreaking scientific advance or the rise of professional organizations, medicine came to be understood as modern through the more prosaic processes of standardization and organization. In doing so, Gainty uncovers medical efficiency as not only a function of industrial capitalism but also a vehicle for balancing populist and autocratic tendencies to maintain a workable American democracy.