Technology in the Garden

Technology in the Garden
Author: Michael I. Luger
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2000-11-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0807863092

More than half of the 116 research parks now operating in the United States were established during the 1980s, with the aim of boosting regional economic growth. But until now no one has systematically analyzed whether research parks do in fact generate new businesses and jobs. Using their own surveys of all existing parks and case studies of three of the most successful--Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, Stanford Research Park in California, and the University of Utah Research Park--Michael Luger and Harvey Goldstein examine the economic impact of such facilities. As the name suggests, a research park is typically meant to provide a spacious setting where basic and applied technological research can be quietly pursued. Because of the experience of a few older and prominent research parks, new parks are expected to generate economic growth for their regions. New or old, most parks have close ties to universities, which join in such ventures to enhance their capabilities as centers of research, provide outlets for entrepreneurial faculty members, and increase job opportunities for graduate students. Too often, the authors say, the vision of "incubating" economic growth in a gardenlike preserve of research and development has failed because of poor planning, lack of firm leadership, and bad luck. Although the longest-lasting parks have met their original goals, the newer ones have enjoyed at best only slight success. Luger and Goldstein conclude that the older facilities have captured much of the market for concentrations of research and development firms, and they discuss alternative strategies that could achieve some of the same goals as research parks, but in a less costly way. Many of these alternatives continue to include a role for universities, and Luger and Goldstein shed fresh light on the linkage between higher education and the use of knowledge for profit.

From the Garden to the City

From the Garden to the City
Author: John Dyer
Publisher: Kregel Publications
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2011-07-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 082548930X

Believers and unbelievers alike are saturated with technology, yet most give it little if any thought. Consumers buy and upgrade as fast as they can, largely unaware of technology’s subtle yet powerful influence. In a world where technology changes almost daily, many are left to wonder: Should Christians embrace all that is happening? Are there some technologies that we need to avoid? Does the Bible give us any guidance on how to use digital tools and social media?

Technology and the Lifeworld

Technology and the Lifeworld
Author: Don Ihde
Publisher:
Total Pages: 246
Release: 1990-05-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

" . . . Dr. Ihde brings an enlightening and deeply humanistic perspective to major technological developments, both past and present." —Science Books & Films "Don Ihde is a pleasure to read. . . . The material is full of nice suggestions and details, empirical materials, fun variations which engage the reader in the work . . . the overall points almost sneak up on you, they are so gently and gradually offered." —John Compton "A sophisticated celebration of cultural diversity and of its enabling technologies. . . . perhaps the best single volume relating the philosophical tradition to the broad issues raised by contemporary technologies." —Choice " . . . important and challenging . . . " —Review of Metaphysics " . . . a range of rich historical, cultural, philosophical, and psychological insights, woven together in an intriguing and clear exposition . . . The book is really a pleasure to read, for its style, immense learning and sanity." —Teaching Philosophy The role of tools and instruments in our relation to the earth and the ways in which technologies are culturally embedded provide the foci of this thought-provoking book.

Rereading the Machine in the Garden

Rereading the Machine in the Garden
Author: Eric Erbacher
Publisher: Campus Verlag
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2014-11-06
Genre: Art
ISBN: 3593501910

The volume reexamines the trope of the intrusive machine and the regenerative pastoral garden, laid out fifty years ago by Leo Marx in "The Machine in the Garden," one of the founding texts of American Studies. Contributions explore the lasting influence of the trope in American culture and the arts, rereading it as a dialectics where nature is as much technologized as technology is naturalized. They trace this dialectic trope in filmic and literary representations of industrial, bureaucratic, and digital gardens; they explore its function in the aftermath of the civil war, the rural electrification during the New Deal, in landscape art, and in ethnic literatures; and they discuss the historical premises and lasting influence of Leo Marx's seminal study.

The Technology Garden

The Technology Garden
Author: Jon Collins
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2007-08-13
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0470724064

"The book contains a practical approach and real actions that can transform the credibility and alignment of IT to the business." --Myron Hrycyk, CIO, NYK Logistics UK & Eire "A significant addition to the Enterprise Architect's bookshelf." --Rupert Brown, Principal Architect, Merrill Lynch Global Business Technology EMEA Many IT deployments fall short of delivering value to the businesses that pay for them. On top of this, the combined forces of rapid business change and technology innovation frequently outpace the ability of IT organisations to make sense of their implications. With business activity and IT now so intimately intertwined, organizations urgently need a framework which allows them to align IT capabilities with business strategies and priorities in a way that is sustainable. A team of IT-expert authors with more than 80 years' combined experience have interviewed dozens of CIOs, IT directors and other senior technical and business decision makes to find out what works and what doesn't. The result is a handbook for organizations of all sizes that want to improve the value of their IT investments, thus enabling their IT capabilities to play a more pivotal business role. Written in plain English that does not descend into technical detail, The Technology Garden provides practical advice for organizations looking to achieve sustainable IT-business alignment. To do so, it defines: * Six key principles - a distillation of best practice that readers can apply directly to the domain of IT-business alignment * A framework for their application - a pragmatic roadmap for the application of the principles * Adoption guidelines - a set of self-assessment checklists that readers can use to understand where they are on the IT-business alignment roadmap and how to progress. With groundbreaking research and proven approaches, this blueprint enables readers to understand what is at the heart of IT-business alignment. Combining IT research, analysis and real-world insight, The Technology Garden is the ultimate no-nonsense guide.

Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain

Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain
Author: Jon Agar
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2018-04-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1911576585

Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain brings together historians with a wide range of interests to take a uniquely wide-lens view of how technology and the environment have been intimately and irreversibly entangled in Britain over the last 300 years. It combines, for the first time, two perspectives with much to say about Britain since the industrial revolution: the history of technology and environmental history. Technologies are modified environments, just as nature is to varying extents engineered. Furthermore, technologies and our living and non-living environment are both predominant material forms of organisation – and self-organisation – that surround and make us. Both have changed over time, in intersecting ways. Technologies discussed in the collection include bulldozers, submarine cables, automobiles, flood barriers, medical devices, museum displays and biotechnologies. Environments investigated include bogs, cities, farms, places of natural beauty and pollution, land and sea. The book explores this diversity but also offers an integrated framework for understanding these intersections.

Lessons from Plants

Lessons from Plants
Author: Beronda L. Montgomery
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2021-04-06
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0674259394

An exploration of how plant behavior and adaptation offer valuable insights for human thriving. We know that plants are important. They maintain the atmosphere by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. They nourish other living organisms and supply psychological benefits to humans as well, improving our moods and beautifying the landscape around us. But plants don’t just passively provide. They also take action. Beronda L. Montgomery explores the vigorous, creative lives of organisms often treated as static and predictable. In fact, plants are masters of adaptation. They “know” what and who they are, and they use this knowledge to make a way in the world. Plants experience a kind of sensation that does not require eyes or ears. They distinguish kin, friend, and foe, and they are able to respond to ecological competition despite lacking the capacity of fight-or-flight. Plants are even capable of transformative behaviors that allow them to maximize their chances of survival in a dynamic and sometimes unfriendly environment. Lessons from Plants enters into the depth of botanic experience and shows how we might improve human society by better appreciating not just what plants give us but also how they achieve their own purposes. What would it mean to learn from these organisms, to become more aware of our environments and to adapt to our own worlds by calling on perception and awareness? Montgomery’s meditative study puts before us a question with the power to reframe the way we live: What would a plant do?

Evolution Made to Order

Evolution Made to Order
Author: Helen Anne
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2016-11-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 022639011X

Plant breeders have long sought technologies to extend human control over nature. Early in the twentieth century, this led some to experiment with startlingly strange tools like x-ray machines, chromosome-altering chemicals, and radioactive elements. Contemporary reports celebrated these mutation-inducing methods as ways of generating variation in plants on demand. Speeding up evolution, they imagined, would allow breeders to genetically engineer crops and flowers to order. Creating a new food crop or garden flower would soon be as straightforward as innovating any other modern industrial product. In Evolution Made to Order, Helen Anne Curry traces the history of America’s pursuit of tools that could intervene in evolution. An immersive journey through the scientific and social worlds of midcentury genetics and plant breeding and a compelling exploration of American cultures of innovation, Evolution Made to Order provides vital historical context for current worldwide ethical and policy debates over genetic engineering.

Invisible Gardens

Invisible Gardens
Author: Peter Walker
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 402
Release: 1996
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780262731164

Invisible Gardens is a composite history of the individuals and firms that defined the field of landscape architecture in America from 1925 to 1975, a period that spawned a significant body of work combining social ideas of enduring value with landscapes and gardens that forged a modern aesthetic. The major protagonists include Thomas Church, Roberto Burle Marx, Isamu Noguchi, Luis Barragan, Daniel Urban Kiley, Stanley White, Hideo Sasaki, Ian McHarg, Lawrence Halprin, and Garrett Eckbo. They were the pioneers of a new profession in America, the first to offer alternatives to the historic landscape and the park tradition, as well as to the suburban sprawl and other unplanned developments of twentieth-century cities and institutions. The work is described against the backdrop of the Great Depression, the Second World War, the postwar recovery, American corporate expansion, and the environmental revolution. The authors look at unbuilt schemes as well as actual gardens, ranging from tiny backyards and play spaces to urban plazas and corporate villas. Some of the projects discussed already occupy a canonical position in modern landscape architecture; others deserve a similar place but are less well known. The result is a record of landscape architecture's cultural contribution - as distinctly different in history, intent, and procedure from its sister fields of architecture and planning - during the years when it was acquiring professional status and struggling to define a modernist aesthetic out of the startling changes in postwar America.