Visions of Energy Futures

Visions of Energy Futures
Author: Benjamin K. Sovacool
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2019-03-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429632509

This book examines the visions, fantasies, frames, discourses, imaginaries, and expectations associated with six state-of-the-art energy systems—nuclear power, hydrogen fuel cells, shale gas, clean coal, smart meters, and electric vehicles—playing a key role in current deliberations about low-carbon energy supply and use. Visions of Energy Futures: Imagining and Innovating Low-Carbon Transitions unveils what the future of energy systems could look like, and how their meanings are produced, often alongside moments of contestation. Theoretically, it analyzes these technological case studies with emerging concepts from various disciplines: utopianism (history of technology), symbolic convergence (communication studies), technological frames (social construction of technology), discursive coalitions (discourse analysis and linguistics), sociotechnical imaginaries (science and technology studies), and the sociology of expectations (innovation studies, future studies). It draws from these cases to create a synthetic set of dichotomies and frameworks for energy futures based on original data collected across two global epistemic communities— nuclear physicists and hydrogen engineers—and experts in Eastern Europe and the Nordic region, stakeholders in South Africa, and newspapers in the United Kingdom. This book is motivated by the premise that tackling climate change via low-carbon energy systems and practices is one of the most significant challenges of the twenty-first century, and that success will require not only new energy technologies, but also new ways of understanding language, visions, and discursive politics. The discursive creation of the energy systems of tomorrow are propagated in polity, hoping to be realized as the material fact of the future, but processed in conflicting ways with underlying tensions as to how contemporary societies ought to be ordered. This book will be essential reading for students and scholars of energy policy, energy and environment, and technology assessment.

Bulletin

Bulletin
Author: Cincinnati (Ohio), Public Library
Publisher:
Total Pages: 312
Release: 1879
Genre:
ISBN:

Utterly Other Discourse

Utterly Other Discourse
Author: Ellen G. Friedman
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 1995
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781564780799

The British novelist and critic Christine Brooke-Rose (born 1923) is increasingly being regarded as one of the most significant writers of the contemporary period. In her dozen novels she has explored themes as diverse as biligualism (as a metaphor for alienation) and the influence of computer technology on the humanities. As these themes suggest, Brooke-Rose is sometimes perceived as a difficult writer, especially given the dazzling virtuosity of the linguistic wordplay that enlivens her later novels. "Utterly Other Discourse" (a phrase from her 1984 novel "Amalgamemnon") provides a valuable introduction to her work; in fifteen essays--some previously published, some written for this book--scholars from America, England, and Europe examine her work from a variety of critical angles.

Presenting Futures

Presenting Futures
Author: Erik Fisher
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2008-05-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1402084161

Welcome to the ?rst volume of the Yearbook of Nanotechnology in Society! Nanotechnology, hailed as “the next industrial revolution” (NSTC 2000) and c- tiqued for being little more than “hype” (Berube 2006), is the site of a great deal of social and intellectual contest. With some ten billion dollars being spent worldwide on nanotechnology research and development annually and a market forecast of trillions of dollars in sales in the medium-term future (Lux Research 2006), nations and ?rms are pursuing nano-related goals with high levels of both effort and - pectations. Yet according to the Woodrow Wilson International Center’s web-based Nanotechnology Consumer Products Inventory, most of the more than 500 na- products on the market as of this writing are basic consumer items—cosmetics, clothing, athletic equipment and the like—with modest, incremental improvements on their non-nano counterparts. Nanotechnology is also the site of an increasing amount of scholarship dedicated to understanding the interactions between society and an emerging knowled- based technological endeavor. Searching the Web of Science indices in social s- ence and humanities for nanotech* and nanoparticle*, for example, yields 231 hits 1 since 1990, but 75 percent of these occur in 2004 through 2007. This scholarship attempts to fathom the implications of nanotechnologies for society, as well as the implications for nanotechnologies of society. Some of it is also engaged in dialogue with both the public and with nanotechnology researchers about the hope and the hype described above.