The Democratization of Invention

The Democratization of Invention
Author: B. Zorina Khan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2005-09-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521811354

This book, first published in 2005, examines the evolution and impact of American intellectual property rights during the 'long nineteenth century'.

Democratizing Innovation

Democratizing Innovation
Author: Eric Von Hippel
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2006-02-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0262250179

The process of user-centered innovation: how it can benefit both users and manufacturers and how its emergence will bring changes in business models and in public policy. Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users—both individuals and firms—often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centered innovation. He explains why and when users find it profitable to develop new products and services for themselves, and why it often pays users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all.The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products—most notably in the free and open-source software movement—but also in physical products. Von Hippel's many examples of user innovation in action range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive. Von Hippel argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes and that they should systematically seek out innovations developed by users. He points to businesses—the custom semiconductor industry is one example—that have learned to assist user-innovators by providing them with toolkits for developing new products. User innovation has a positive impact on social welfare, and von Hippel proposes that government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, should be realigned to eliminate biases against it. The goal of a democratized user-centered innovation system, says von Hippel, is well worth striving for. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license.

FabLab

FabLab
Author: Julia Walter-Herrmann
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2014-03-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3839423821

Ten years after the first FabLab (a so called fabrication laboratory) was opened at MIT, more than 120 FabLabs exist all over the world. Today, it is time to look back at a decade of FabLab activities. This book shows how small production devices, such as laser cutters and 3D printers, and dedicated educationists, researchers and FabLab practitioners transform the fields of learning, work, production, design, maker culture, law and science on a global scale. In this composition experts from various countries, such as Germany, India or the USA, and distinguished academic institutions, such as MIT or Stanford University, discuss theoretical questions and introduce practical approaches concerning FabLab activities.

The Life and Death of Democracy

The Life and Death of Democracy
Author: John Keane
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 717
Release: 2009-06-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1847377602

John Keane's The Life and Death of Democracy will inspire and shock its readers. Presenting the first grand history of democracy for well over a century, it poses along the way some tough and timely questions: can we really be sure that democracy had its origins in ancient Greece? How did democratic ideals and institutions come to have the shape they do today? Given all the recent fanfare about democracy promotion, why are many people now gripped by the feeling that a bad moon is rising over all the world's democracies? Do they indeed have a future? Or is perhaps democracy fated to melt away, along with our polar ice caps? The work of one of Britain's leading political writers, this is no mere antiquarian history. Stylishly written, this superb book confronts its readers with an entirely fresh and irreverent look at the past, present and future of democracy. It unearths the beginnings of such precious institutions and ideals as government by public assembly, votes for women, the secret ballot, trial by jury and press freedom. It tracks the changing, hotly disputed meanings of democracy and describes quite a few of the extraordinary characters, many of them long forgotten, who dedicated their lives to building or defending democracy. And it explains why democracy is still potentially the best form of government on earth -- and why democracies everywhere are sleepwalking their way into deep trouble.

Inventing the Industrial Revolution

Inventing the Industrial Revolution
Author: Christine MacLeod
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2002-05-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521893992

This book examines the development of the English patent system and its relationship with technical change during the period between 1660 and 1800, when the patent system evolved from an instrument of royal patronage into one of commercial competition among the inventors and manufacturers of the Industrial Revolution. It analyses the legal and political framework within which patenting took place and gives an account of the motivations and fortunes of patentees, who obtained patents for a variety of purposes beyond the simple protection of an invention. It includes the first in-depth attempt to gauge the reliability of the patent statistics as a measure of inventive activity and technical change in the early part of the Industrial Revolution, and suggests that the distribution of patents is a better guide to the advance of capitalism than to the centres of inventive activity. It also queries the common assumption that the chief goal of inventors was to save labour, and examines contemporary criticism of the patent system in the light of the changing conceptualisation of invention among natural scientists and political economists.

Waves of Democracy

Waves of Democracy
Author: John Markoff
Publisher: Pine Forge Press
Total Pages: 196
Release: 1996-02-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780803990197

Waves of Democracy looks at two centuries of history of democratization as a series of multicontinental episodes in which social movements and elite power holders in many countries converged to reorganize political systems. Democracy is defined and redefined in these episodes. John Markoff examines several ways in which governing elites of national states mimic each other and ways in which social movements and elites interact. There is no other book written for undergraduates that looks at democracy over such a broad sweep of time and across so many countries and cultures.

The Invention of the 'Underclass'

The Invention of the 'Underclass'
Author: Loïc Wacquant
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2022-01-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1509552197

At century’s close, American social scientists, policy analysts, philanthropists and politicians became obsessed with a fearsome and mysterious new group said to be ravaging the ghetto: the urban “underclass.” Soon the scarecrow category and its demonic imagery were exported to the United Kingdom and continental Europe and agitated the international study of exclusion in the postindustrial metropolis. In this punchy book, Loïc Wacquant retraces the invention and metamorphoses of this racialized folk devil, from the structural conception of Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal to the behavioral notion of Washington think-tank experts to the neo-ecological formulation of sociologist William Julius Wilson. He uncovers the springs of the sudden irruption, accelerated circulation, and abrupt evaporation of the “underclass” from public debate, and reflects on the implications for the social epistemology of urban marginality. What accounts for the “lemming effect” that drew a generation of scholars of race and poverty over a scientific cliff? What are the conditions for the formation and bursting of “conceptual speculative bubbles”? What is the role of think tanks, journalism, and politics in imposing “turnkey problematics” upon social researchers? What are the special quandaries posed by the naming of dispossessed and dishonored populations in scientific discourse and how can we reformulate the explosive question of “race” to avoid these troubles? Answering these questions constitutes an exacting exercise in epistemic reflexivity in the tradition of Bachelard, Canguilhem and Bourdieu, and it issues in a clarion call for social scientists to defend their intellectual autonomy against the encroachments of outside powers, be they state officials, the media, think tanks, or philanthropic organizations. Compact, meticulous and forcefully argued, this study in the politics of social science knowledge will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, anthropology, urban studies, ethnic studies, geography, intellectual history, the philosophy of science and public policy.

The Ethics of Invention: Technology and the Human Future

The Ethics of Invention: Technology and the Human Future
Author: Sheila Jasanoff
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2016-08-30
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0393253856

We live in a world increasingly governed by technology—but to what end? Technology rules us as much as laws do. It shapes the legal, social, and ethical environments in which we act. Every time we cross a street, drive a car, or go to the doctor, we submit to the silent power of technology. Yet, much of the time, the influence of technology on our lives goes unchallenged by citizens and our elected representatives. In The Ethics of Invention, renowned scholar Sheila Jasanoff dissects the ways in which we delegate power to technological systems and asks how we might regain control. Our embrace of novel technological pathways, Jasanoff shows, leads to a complex interplay among technology, ethics, and human rights. Inventions like pesticides or GMOs can reduce hunger but can also cause unexpected harm to people and the environment. Often, as in the case of CFCs creating a hole in the ozone layer, it takes decades before we even realize that any damage has been done. Advances in biotechnology, from GMOs to gene editing, have given us tools to tinker with life itself, leading some to worry that human dignity and even human nature are under threat. But despite many reasons for caution, we continue to march heedlessly into ethically troubled waters. As Jasanoff ranges across these and other themes, she challenges the common assumption that technology is an apolitical and amoral force. Technology, she masterfully demonstrates, can warp the meaning of democracy and citizenship unless we carefully consider how to direct its power rather than let ourselves be shaped by it. The Ethics of Invention makes a bold argument for a future in which societies work together—in open, democratic dialogue—to debate not only the perils but even more the promises of technology.

The Origins of Democratic Thinking

The Origins of Democratic Thinking
Author: Cynthia Farrar
Publisher: CUP Archive
Total Pages: 324
Release: 1988
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521375849

Dr Farrar argues that the development of political theory accompanied the growth of democracy at Athens in the fifth century BC. By analysing the writings of Protagoras, Thucydides and Democritus in the context of political developments and speculation about the universe, she reveals the existence of a distinctive approach to the characterisation of democratic order, and in doing so demonstrates the virtues of Thucydides' historical conception of politics.

The Political Invention of Fragile States

The Political Invention of Fragile States
Author: Sonja Grimm
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 163
Release: 2016-04-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317625455

This book investigates the emergence, the dissemination and the reception of the notion of ‘state fragility’. It analyses the process of conceptualisation, examining how the ‘fragile states’ concept was framed by policy makers to describe reality in accordance with their priorities in the fields of development and security. Contributors investigate the instrumental use of the ‘state fragility’ label in the legitimisation of Western policy interventions in countries facing violence and profound poverty. They also emphasise the agency of actors ‘on the receiving end’, describing how the elites and governments in so-called ‘fragile states’ have incorporated and reinterpreted the concept to fit their own political agendas. A first set of articles examines the role played by the World Bank, the OECD, the European Union and the G7+ in the transnational diffusion of the concept, which is understood as a critical element in the new discourse on international aid and security. A second set of papers employs three case studies (Sudan, Indonesia and Uganda) to explore the processes of appropriation, reinterpretation and the strategic use of the ‘fragile state’ concept. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.