The modern city is the cradle of human activity, and through it humankind has both the ability to strip the planet of life and the ability to create thriving social and ecological systems. Strategic and interactive urbanisms that nurture multifarious ways of being in the world need to be formulated to save the natural world from ecological disaster. This paper traces the genealogy of the city from the unexplored wilderness to the to the conflux of technology and nature on city streets. Following the work of Neil Smith and William Cronon, this paper finds the roots of the urban system in the social construction of nature. Considering Martin Heidegger’s thoughts on technology along with David Harvey’s analysis of the urban system, it argues that city-building is a technē, an art which allows humankind to be at home with the world. As a part of this project, an interactive web application for gathering images and stories about urban spaces was created to provide a tool for citizen urbanism. The application, The Department of Civic Images, engages people in a dialogical urbanism that encourages citizens to see their environment as an intricate and valuable life network.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Washington State University, May 2010. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on May 14, 2010). "Department of English." Includes bibliographical references (p. 119-128).

Our world is a world of technology, and technology is part of what has made human beings so adept at survival. Yet, the 21st century has seen a new type of technology that is unlike anything ever seen before. This new information technology is known as social media (including such things as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.), and it has the power to influence our very being. However, we are seemingly uncritical and unconcerned about social media in relation to society. This project attempts to analyze social media and its relationship to human beings from an ontological standpoint. I do so by exploring both the ontic and the ontological aspects of social media. In order to do so, I use a method of hermeneutical inquiry and phenomenological exploration. By using the works of several different thinkers, I attempt to get at the essence of the relationship between humans and social media. First, using the works of Martin Heidegger, I argue that there is an ethical dimension contained within the concept of authenticity. Then, using the works of psychologists, phenomenologists, and cognitive scientists, I show that social media has just as much control over us as we think we have over it. Lastly, I return to Heidegger's work in order to understand what the very essence of social media is, and I then explain what our relationship to social media ought to be in order to live authentically. In doing so, I attempt to explain how we can gain a free relation to social media in order to establish the ways in which it can be most helpful to us.

Andrew Feenberg, a philosopher of technology, argues for a democratic rationalization of technology, whereby subjugated actors intervene in the design process to achieve their interests. He claims that environmentalism represents one of the greatest opportunities for this kind of intervention. His suggestion seems viable; most if not all of the current environmental problems stem from maladaptive technologies. Transforming these technologies is therefore imperative if we are to move toward more sustainable societies. Feenberg, however, does not address the details of his proposal or offer more than a few brief examples of what he is advocating. I use Feenberg's Critical Theory of technology to analyze and assess various environmentalisms. Along the way I expose the deficiencies of his theory and attempt build on his work. One problem, however, is that environmentalism is by no means a homogonous entity; rather, it is composed of numerous strands with their own unique histories, aims, and strategies. I argue that of the various environmentalisms grassroots environmental justice resonates most with Feenberg's theory. To illustrate, I present a case study of the toxics movement that emerged out of the Love Canal incident. I conclude by showing how grassroots environmental justice could enhance their effectiveness by employing the suggested Critical Theory of technology. / Ph. D.

Langdon Winner's article "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" (1986) has become a classic piece within Science and Technology Studies. While Winner was certainly not the first to consider the inherently political qualities of technology, his article has assumed the role of a touchstone for both supporters and critics of the idea that artifacts embody political and social relationships. In the chapters that follow, I shall try to answer Winner and his critics, by studying a particular technology that I believe to be capable of shedding some much-needed light on the issue. My aim is provide a restatement of Winner's question in the pages that follow, with the hope of getting past such problematic terms as "embodiment" and "encapsulation." My hope is to make the issue itself clearer, so that we can get to the heart of how technology, values, and human beings systematically interact. I shall utilize in my discussion computer network scanning software. I shall first discuss the background to the question "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" and then describe some of the ethical and political forces alive in the computer security world. Next I shall closely examine two particular pieces of network scanning software and describe their interactions in terms of political and ethical motivations. Finally, I shall use this case study as a basis for a broader discussion of how values may be better conceived in terms of complex interactive systems of human beings and technologies. / Master of Science

This thesis explores the lived meaning of requiring, requesting and receiving information and communications technology (ICT) assistance for international students with limited or no background with ICT. The anecdotes and reflections shared by the participants delve into a range of feelings, from uncertainty, distress and condescension to fascination, determination and affirmation. They reach into places where the participants built their sense of competence and potential with and through ICT and felt indebted to their help providers in the process. The participants help seeking with ICT emerged as being a self-conscious search for discrete, non-judgmental, patient demonstration and guided practice, reliant upon the formation of reciprocal, helping relations with others. As a phenomenological study involving 10 participants, analysis sought for depth of meaning, contemplated in relation to philosophy, literature, art and personal experience. The theme of being lost in the logic of ICT and the maze of help seeking in a foreign environment emerge as a potent metaphor to guide tactful ICT help provision in diverse, post-secondary institutions marked by ubiquitous ICT integration.

This thesis explores the lived meaning of requiring, requesting and receiving information and communications technology (ICT) assistance for international students with limited or no background with ICT. The anecdotes and reflections shared by the participants delve into a range of feelings, from uncertainty, distress and condescension to fascination, determination and affirmation. They reach into places where the participants built their sense of competence and potential with and through ICT and felt indebted to their help providers in the process. The participants help seeking with ICT emerged as being a self-conscious search for discrete, non-judgmental, patient demonstration and guided practice, reliant upon the formation of reciprocal, helping relations with others. As a phenomenological study involving 10 participants, analysis sought for depth of meaning, contemplated in relation to philosophy, literature, art and personal experience. The theme of being lost in the logic of ICT and the maze of help seeking in a foreign environment emerge as a potent metaphor to guide tactful ICT help provision in diverse, post-secondary institutions marked by ubiquitous ICT integration.

Technological knowledge is of many different kinds, from experience-based know-how in the crafts to science-based knowledge in modern engineering. It is inherently oriented towards being useful in technological activities, such as manufacturing and engineering design. The purpose of this thesis is to highlight special characteristics of technological knowledge and how these affect how technology should be taught in school. It consists of an introduction, a summary in Swedish, and five papers: Paper I is about rules of thumb, which are simple instructions, used to guide actions toward a specific result, without need of advanced knowledge. One off the major advantages of rules of thumb is the ease with which they can be learnt. One of their major disadvantages is that they cannot easily be adjusted to new situations or conditions. Paper II describes how Gilbert Ryle's distinction between knowing how and knowing that is applicable in the technological domain. Knowing how and knowing that are commonly used together, but there are important differences between them which motivate why they should be regarded as different types: they are learnt in different ways, justified in different ways, and knowing that is susceptible to Gettier type problems which technological knowing how is not. Paper III is based on a survey about how Swedish technology teachers understand the concept of technological knowledge. Their opinions show an extensive variation, and they have no common terminology for describing the knowledge. Paper IV deals with non-scientific models that are commonly used by engineers, based on for example folk theories or obsolete science. These should be included in technology education if it is to resemble real technology. Different, and partly contradictory, epistemological frameworks must be used in different school subjects. This leads to major pedagogical challenges, but also to opportunities to clarify the differences between technology and the natural sciences and between models and reality. Paper V is about explanation, prediction, and the use of models in technology education. Explanations and models in technology differ from those in the natural sciences in that they have to include users' actions and intentions. / <p>QC 20140512</p>

My main objective is to reveal and illustrate the patterns and processes underlying the practice of ecological restoration in post-colonial landscapes. To focus my analysis, I asked what these patterns are, and how they inhibit or enable the Iwor (Ainu Traditional Living Space) Restoration Project (IRP). The IRP is a state-funded project aimed at improving the well-being of Ainu in Hokkaido, Japan. I used interviews, participant observation and text analyses to elucidate the dynamics at work in and around the project. My findings suggest that colonial and technological practices inhibit good ecological restoration practices in IRP by disengaging people, or more subtly preventing them from engaging with it. Colonially, structural and discursive marginalization maintains economic deprivation through denying progressive conversations about community empowerment. This process also reinforces subjective power relationships of Wajin, the ethnic majority, dominance. Technologically, I observed signs of Borgmann’s (1984) “device paradigm” that are both institutionally (e.g. government agencies) and materially (e.g. infrastructure and tools) driving the IRP toward technological restoration and away from focal restoration. This was particularly apparent in such instances where means and ends were inverted, or the government agencies were inaccessible to the Ainu participants. These patterns in turn make IRP less appealing for Ainu and other local peoples. However, I also found that the room for creativity and attention to human-nature relationships in ecological restoration allow creation of the new space where Ainu can assert their values more strongly. This is the Kotan Iwor where the space embodies both Iwor and iwor, two representations of Wajin and Ainu views of the “Traditional Living Space” respectively. My findings on Kotan Iwor (the traditional settlement restoration site) suggest that there is a significant potential in the ecological restoration practices because of the practice’s inherent capacity to bring people and the landscape together in a creative context. With careful attention to colonial, technological, and other dynamics, good ecological restoration practices have the potential to restore and improve the well-being of indigenous and non-indigenous community members alike. / Graduate

The aim of this thesis is to investigate and further the understanding of the interaction between law, technology and society. My original contribution to this understanding lies in an account and analysis of the process of emergence (or potential emergence) of new legal concepts and of how new and developing technologies and social responses influence that process. Specifically, the work focuses on identity, which I argue is a currently emerging legal concept, and the ways in which identity, variously understood, is impacted by new technologies and changes in the social landscape, what those impacts on identity might be, and the relationship of those changes to the representation (or otherwise) of identity in law. In the literature looking at law and technology and the legal responses to the issues of regulating technology, I critique the conceptualisation of law as “lagging behind” novel advances in technology. By drawing upon work in philosophy of technology, sociology and science and technology studies it is argued that emerging technologies have a modulating effect upon social values and moralities and that equally the modulation of society by technology and the complex dynamics of social change or resistance may also have an impact upon the law itself. In turn developments in law may be part of the ongoing process of the identification, conceptualisation, recognition and contestation over specific social issues and the way in which they should be addressed. Such dynamics and conflicts can lead to the shifting of accountability regimes and the recognition of new values, harms and interests and their own conceptualisation and justification. Studying the emergence of new legal concepts provides a link in to understanding this mutual coproducing relationship between law/regulation, technology and society. My approach to this study seeks to better understand the factors that precipitate formal recognition in law of specific concepts, an aspect of legal development that is not well considered by the existing literature in law and that in Science and Technology Studies (STS). In so doing it contributes a novel conceptualisation of an “emerging legal concept” and a conceptual analysis of identity as an emerging legal concept specifically as currently modulated by novel biotechnologies.