Thesis (Ph. D. in Aerospace Engineering and Policy Analysis)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology, Management, and Policy Program, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-128). / Current space launch/landing events are conducted only within Special Use Airspace (SUA), separate from air traffic. This is a strategic traffic management policy because SUA size and duration are set well in advance. It forces space operations to disrupt aviation, which could become costly with growth in air or space transportation. This was investigated through integrated engineering/policy analysis of strategic and tactical options. Total annual disruption cost was calculated using the number of conflicts per SUA event, the annual SUA events, the average disruption per conflict, and the cost per unit disruption. The conflict count was identified as most important, and an analytical airspace conflict model was developed to predict the number of conflicts associated with restricting an arbitrary region of airspace for a given duration. This approach was used to investigate the sensitivity of disruption cost to SUA radius, SUA active duration, air traffic density, relative velocity, annual SUA events, and conflict resolution distance. The current annual cost is under $1 million, but the expected ranges of all factors comprise a plausible range of $100 to $8 million. This cost was most sensitive to SUA radius: on average, doubling the radius multiplies the cost by 49, while doubling the traffic density simply doubles the cost, and doubling the SUA active duration multiplies the cost by only 1.8. / (cont.) The cost was also two orders of magnitude more sensitive to "control" factors (SUA size and duration) than to "market" factors (air and space traffic levels). Four scenarios investigated changes in multiple factors: 2% or 6% annual growth in space operations, managed by reducing only SUA radius or by reducing active duration and scheduling events to affect less air traffic. The results confirmed that radius alone is more powerful than other factors combined, and suggested that tactical alternatives could control costs over time, even with high aerospace transportation growth. However, a preliminary risk analysis indicated a safety need for large SUA, which also offers security benefits. The final recommendations were continued use of SUA for the short-medium term, with detailed safety analysis required for future consideration of several tactical options. / by John M. Falker, III. / Ph.D.in Aerospace Engineering and Policy Analysis

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology and Policy Program, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 58-61). / Motor vehicle travel is the primary means of transportation in the United States, providing freedom in travel and enterprise for many people. However, motor vehicle accidents are the largest component of unintentional injuries and contribute to a high degree of morbidity and mortality for all ages. This thesis analyzes the relationship between feedback technologies and driver behavior. Based on the findings, policy recommendations were made to help ensure that the privacy and trust of the public are not compromised, as ubiquitous technologies become a reality in automobiles. The thesis provides an overview of the most modem mechanisms available in cars today. Furthermore, this thesis takes the first steps to combining existing technologies into a single system that not only tracks driver behavior, but also provides feedback in the hopes of improving drive performance and safety. The qualitative discussion includes a stakeholder analysis of the prime interests and effects of all parties that are impacted by ubiquitous technologies in the car. The qualitative discussion also contains the results of four focus groups that were conducted to gain first hand insights about the view of the drivers about monitoring technologies in the car. / (cont.) This study finds that most drivers have a symbiotic relationship with the technologies that exist in their car; however, drivers feel uncomfortable with a fully automated system. Their concerns rise from the belief that fully automated systems take control away from the driver. Drivers were also concerned about the privacy and security of the data collected and stored by these technologies in their vehicles. These concerns can be addressed within the existing legal framework, but additional regulations also need to be designed because as the technology changes so will the concerns. Therefore, it is important to design policies that are flexible, rather than completely depending on current regulations to address future concerns. / by Alex Fernando Narváez Bustamante. / S.M.

Thesis: Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 216-226). / Pocket computers, called "smartphones," have become a part of everyday life over the past decade. Most people now routinely carry around with them millions of times more computing power than generated the Apollo mission to the Moon. They use it to access, process, and share information quickly and cheaply, in furtherance of the things people have long done: buying and selling, socializing, and so on, yet faster and across greater distances-characteristic of what we call "modernity." This has affected the ways in which people are working, and who is working, doing what, today. This thesis reports the results of a field study of one new kind of laborer who has been brought into work consequent to the smartphone: Uber drivers. The author conducted ethnographic fieldwork over one year in Boston, Massachusetts, and the surrounding area using ride-along sampling, participant observation, lengthy interviewing, and systematic coding in order to better understand a software-organized, person-to-person labor market in which the person who does the labor also brings the capital in the form of a vehicle used to provide transportation to other people. The first chapter of the thesis provides a typology of Uber drivers based on semi-random sampling through ride-alongs. The second chapter describes collective action that was undertaken by Uber drivers at Boston's Logan Airport in the form of a strike against the algorithm, which was an effort to induce the software to perceive an (artificial) driver shortage, leading to an increase in the price of fares. The third chapter offers a theory of the structure of Uber as an organization that mobilizes labor by using software to facilitate economic transactions that are triangulated between two users and the firm. The chapter also explains how this structure was particularly apt at mobilizing large numbers of people to carry out "regulatory breach," as they worked as Uber drivers doing the equivalent of taxi or livery work without complying with any of the applicable legal regulations. The final chapter explains how analysis of the field data, in combination with the new theoretical insights of the thesis, drives a conclusion suggested by the thesis title: that Uber has made a digital working class. / by H. C. Robinson. / Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS)

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology and Policy Program, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-106). / This thesis studies the application of project finance as the most efficient financing method for the construction and operation of infrastructure projects such as motorways, airports, power plants, pipelines, wastewater/sewage plants, dams, landline or cellular networks, and natural resources mines. These are large-scale, complex, and capital-intensive engineering systems, which until recently, were developed and operated either by the public or the private sector. The latest model for the construction and operation of an infrastructure project is Public-Private Partnerships ("PPP"), a hybrid structure that is becoming widespread. PPP employ private companies to construct and then operate infrastructure assets, which historically have been financed with public resources and operated on a not-for-profit basis. Through PPP agreements such as concessions, governments shift construction and operating risks to the private sector, which is usually more efficient in building and then running the assets. Project finance is a large and rapidly growing subfield of finance, yet one where academic theory and research distantly lag current practice. Project finance relies on private capital sources for financing the PPP infrastructure project, as opposed to direct government financing or corporate financing. / (cont.) The thesis hypothesis is that project finance constitutes the most robust and sophisticated financial mechanism for maximizing return on investment and mitigating risk in PPP infrastructure projects. It is the goal of this thesis to provide the organizational methodology, financial application, risk management techniques, and explain all relevant aspects of project finance so that public policy makers, developers, bankers, contractors, and other decision makers will be in a position to holistically evaluate this financial instrument and accordingly proceed to its adoption for financing infrastructure projects. / by Theodoros Patramanis. / S.M.

The aspects of educational institutions and the systemic practice of education are the product of 2 distinct features of education. The first is the institutional practice of a chosen philosophy of education. The second is the technologies that have afforded the facilitation of information production, consumption and distribution essential processes of education. Taking advantage of major reform opportunities in educational practice, made possible by an emerging digital information system the current trend in education tends to relinquish the long tradition of philosophy of education and embraces the cultivation of a reflective and productive citizenry through education. However, by looking at the ways in which the technologies of their time constrained or enabled the imaginations of our most influential philosophers of education (Plato, Rousseau and Dewey), we will better understand how real technologies and ideal philosophies are necessarily related. With such knowledge, we may inform our educational reform alternatives with the goal of developing a democratic citizenry through education. In no way, is this dissertation meant to provide specific recommendations for educational reform though the Digital Dante case study illustrates some possible reform alternatives. Rather, it is meant to demonstrate the ways in which technology and philosophy, educational institutions and industry and K-12 and higher education are all necessary players in the goal of creating a new form of civic education.

Thesis: Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 252-261). / This dissertation examines the history of shark-human interactions in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It argues that the mid-twentieth century onward saw a series of conjunctures -technological, cultural, and scientific -that thrust sharks and humans into unprecedented levels of contact. This led to both a rise in preoccupation with sharks, and an emergence of new stakeholder groups that sought produce knowledge about them. The conflicting definitions, attitudes, and responses to sharks presented by these various groups are linked to greater trends in science, culture, and society. In particular, the way humans write and think about sharks and other man-eating predators has deep links to the position we see ourselves occupying in the environment. Further, anxieties about sharks are strongly tied to the complicated cultural relationships that people have with the marine environment, both as a place of wonder and terror. Lastly, sharks also allow us to examine the technologies we use to tame and navigate the ocean, as the shifts that brought humans and sharks into closer proximity were intertwined with new technologies that changed the ways humans interacted with marine spaces. Each chapter presents case studies from the United States and South Africa, juxtaposing the responses by each region. The opening chapter charts the rise of shark attack numbers in the mid-century. It traces the impact of highly publicized shark attacks in the U.S. and South Africa in the 1950s, which resulted in differing approaches to combat the threat of shark attack. Chapter Two explores the intersections between popular depictions of sharks and changing perceptions of shark behavior, centering on the ur-text of shark literature: Jaws. Chapter Three traces the advent of shark tourism, and examines the controversy surrounding white shark cage diving in South Africa. Chapter Four explores the response of Cape Cod communities to an influx of white sharks into the region, drawing parallels with earlier historical examples of predator eradication and conservation. The dissertation thus argues that studying shark-human interactions allows for the interrogation of divisions between myth and science, experts and laypersons, popular culture and scientific knowledge, humans and the environment. / by Michaela Jane Thompson. / Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS)

Thesis: Ph. D. in History and Social Study of Science and Technology (HASTS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-285). / This dissertation is a study of emergent economic forms of life. It investigates recent remakings of economic existence and modes of disseminating these forms of life, and does so with particular reference to the crafting of electricity markets in the United States. It draws on more than a year of fieldwork among experts and users involved in electricity exchange. The experts and users among whom I conducted participant observation include computer programmers who assist companies that trade in electricity markets by collecting information and making trading suggestions, electrical engineers who design new infrastructures such as electricity markets for buying and selling electricity in bulk, psychologists and social scientists who study people's electricity consumption behavior to generate economic technologies to save money to users and providers of electricity, and citizen groups based in West Virginia and rural Illinois that organize against electricity markets' exclusion of consumers from decision-making mechanisms. Bringing questions of economic anthropology to bear upon the emergent literature of the anthropology of infrastructures, I propose that new economic forms of existence often come to being though infrastructure building and maintenance. For the last 20 years, experts of diverse technical backgrounds have been reprogramming the electric grid to allow for enhanced calculative choice and competition - principles at the core of the neoliberal agenda. I demonstrate that people who do not necessarily concern themselves with the formal study of economics often take the lead in creating and propagating wide-ranging economic emergent forms of life, such as neoliberalism, across the social field. To zero in on their work, I develop the concept of "techno-economics": an approach that understands commodities, whether they are living nonhumans such as livestock or inorganic processes like electricity, as more than passive receptacles of human design, and locates humans within their efforts to commoditize and marketize unruly objects, like electricity - a commodity that cannot be stored in warehouses or shipped on highways. Anthropological studies of the techno-economic, I suggest, are best equipped to make connections in ethnographic representation between otherwise disparate nodes of social life, like expertise and wires, law and steel, and finally, economics and electricity. / by Canay Özden-Schilling. / Ph. D. in History and Social Study of Science and Technology (HASTS)

Thesis (Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS))--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, leaves 252-257). / With the emergence of biomedical technologies, human body parts from living or dead donors have become commodities in the international networks of trade. This dissertation tries to understand religious, political and ethical discourses on this emerging economy and how it creates its subjects in Turkey. By drawing analogies from the early days of anatomy and mental health practices and by using a three-fold-corpus (state, body and law) as a framework, it illustrates how the state, the religious law on the body, and social inequalities turn some subjects to objects of this biomedical practice while extending life for others. Life histories, oral histories, doctors' and patients' accounts, media reporting, urban legends, cinematography, theater, poetry and literature speak of this new biomedical life. The meaning of the cadaver, the brain-dead body, and the living donor are reevaluated. The personhood of suicides, the homeless, the poor, the mentally ill, the immigrant, and women are all questioned with the redefinition of boundaries of life and death. Biomedicine effects this kind of social change. / (cont.) A cultural history of this production sheds a light onto how Turkey has become one of the centers of organ trafficking in the Middle East in the 1990s, how doctors generate biomedical politics inspired by their American or European counterparts, and how patients, who have acquired kidneys, rationalize and legitimize the world they live in while they seek for "a second life," "a humane treatment," and social equality. Simultaneously new definitions of the human, the person and the self emerge as a new body is reconstructed with parts originating from another human being. It is the history of the biomedicalization of the self. / by Aslihan Sanal. / Ph.D.in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology and Policy Program, 2006. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-106). / Governmental industrial policies have great influence on industrial performances and development trajectories. The infant industry theory has been the dominating theoretical foundation of the industrial policies in developing countries to protect and foster their immature industries. However, the successful application of infant industry theory is subject to many conditions, such as the economic and political environment in a specific country. In this thesis, the case of China's automotive industry under strong industrial policies is used to demonstrate the complex dynamics between policies and industrial development, as well as the interactions between government and industry. Especially, the key factors that determine the success or failure of the infant industry theory are the research focus. The overall industrial characteristics of China's automotive industry were overviewed. The industry was protected and fostered in the past two decades with a few policy options, such as trade barriers, joint venture regulation, local content rule, industrial entry limit and etc. However, the indigenous industry became highly fragmented, still lacks independent technological capabilities, and relies on the international automakers which have gradually dominated the passenger car market in China over the time of protection. / (cont.) Systematic causal analyses are conducted to explore the essential reasons for the distorted policy impacts on industrial evolution. The results indicate the regionalism and departmentalism in China's government system led to the fragmentation, and the "regulatory capture" between the government and state-owned enterprises is the major reason for the oligopoly of joint ventures and the industry-wide lack of active capability development. The uniqueness of the strong governmental ownership in the market players in the Chinese automotive industry determined the failure of the application of infant industry theory. A further cross-country comparative analysis also supports these major findings. A few policy recommendations, including ownership reform of state-owned enterprises, centralization of industrial management and etc., are proposed at the end of the thesis. / by Jianxi Luo. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Technology and Policy Program, 2001. / "June 2001." / Includes bibliographical references (p. 119-125). / Aircraft are a significant source of emissions whose impact on local air quality and global climate change is expected to increase as the aviation industry continues to grow. Operational improvements are an attractive alternative for emissions reductions, because in addition to the environmental benefits, they can reduce airspace congestion, delays and unnecessary fuel consumption. Furthermore, most stakeholders and regulations prefer operational measures over increased stringency or environmental taxes. This thesis estimates emissions reductions through operational improvements by comparing mission time, emissions and fuel consumption for a conservative baseline scenario and for actual aviation activity. Unlike previous efforts, fuel consumption estimates are not based on fleet averages and schedules but are based on actual mission times and aircraft types from the Airline Service Quality Performance (ASQP) database, which contains airline information reported by the ten largest US carriers. Results indicate that fuel bum during ground operations has been growing at a faster rate than operations or total mission time in US domestic aviation and may therefore become a considerable constraint to airport expansion, and that the potential for local emissions reductions through improved surface operations is significant. The results also indicate that significant airborne fuel burn savings may be achieved through operational improvements, but these are not sufficient to offset the growth in aviation emissions. This suggests the need for a comprehensive approach that combines other alternatives, such as increased stringency and market-based mechanisms. A systems engineering approach is recommended to address this complex effort, which must reconcile diverging positions of stakeholders vis-a-vis reductions alternatives and structure a harmonized regulatory framework. / by Bruno Miller. / S.M.