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"Technology -- Psychological aspects"
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The sceptical optimist : why technology isn't the answer to everything
The rapid developments in technologies - especially computing and the advent of many 'smart' devices, as well as rapid and perpetual communication via the Internet - has led to a frequently voiced view which Nicholas Agar describes as 'radical optimism'. Radical optimists claim that accelerating technical progress will soon end poverty, disease, and ignorance, and improve our happiness and well-being. Agar disputes the claim that technological progress will automatically produce great improvements in subjective well-being. He argues that radical optimism 'assigns to technological progress an undeserved pre-eminence among all the goals pursued by our civilization'. Instead, Agar uses the most recent psychological studies about human perceptions of well-being to create a realistic model of the impact technology will have. Although he accepts that technological advance does produce benefits, he insists that these are significantly less than those proposed by the radical optimists, and aspects of such progress can also pose a threat to values such as social justice and our relationship with nature, while problems such as poverty cannot be understood in technological terms. He concludes by arguing that a more realistic assessment of the benefits that technological advance can bring will allow us to better manage its risks in future.
Book
Affect and Artificial Intelligence
In 1950, Alan Turing, the British mathematician, cryptographer, and computer pioneer, looked to the future: now that the conceptual and technical parameters for electronic brains had been established, what kind of intelligence could be built? Should machine intelligence mimic the abstract thinking of a chess player or should it be more like the developing mind of a child? Should an intelligent agent only think, or should it also learn, feel, and grow?
Affect and Artificial Intelligence is the first in-depth analysis of affect and intersubjectivity in the computational sciences. Elizabeth Wilson makes use of archival and unpublished material from the early years of AI (1945 70) until the present to show that early researchers were more engaged with questions of emotion than many commentators have assumed. She documents how affectivity was managed in the canonical works of Walter Pitts in the 1940s and Turing in the 1950s, in projects from the 1960s that injected artificial agents into psychotherapeutic encounters, in chess-playing machines from the 1940s to the present, and in the Kismet (sociable robotics) project at MIT in the 1990s.
eBook
The handbook of the psychology of communication technology
The Handbook of the Psychology of Communication Technology offers an unparalleled source for seminal and cutting-edge research on the psychological aspects of communicating with and via emergent media technologies, with leading scholars providing insights that advance our knowledge on human-technology interactions. •A uniquely focused review of extensive research on technology and digital media from a psychological perspective
•Authoritative chapters by leading scholars studying psychological aspects of communication technologies
•Covers all forms of media from Smartphones to Robotics, from Social Media to Virtual Reality
•Explores the psychology behind our use and abuse of modern communication technologies
•New theories and empirical findings about ways in which our lives are transformed by digital media
eBook
The Inner History of Devices
For more than two decades, in such landmark studies asThe Second SelfandLife on the Screen, Sherry Turkle has challenged our collective imagination with her insights about how technology enters our private worlds. InThe Inner History of Devices, she describes her process, an approach that reveals how what we make is woven into our ways of seeing ourselves. She brings together three traditions of listening -- that of the memoirist, the clinician, and the ethnographer. Each informs the others to compose an inner history of devices. We read about objects ranging from cell phones and video poker to prosthetic eyes, from Web sites and television to dialysis machines. In an introductory essay, Turkle makes the case for an \"intimate ethnography\" that challenges conventional wisdom. One personal computer owner tells Turkle: \"This computer means everything to me. It's where I put my hope.\" Turkle explains that she began that conversation thinking she would learn how people put computers to work. By its end, her question has changed: \"What was there about personal computers that offered such deep connection? What did a computer have that offered hope?\"The Inner History of Devicesteaches us to listen for the answer. In the memoirs, ethnographies, and clinical cases collected in this volume, we read about an American student who comes to terms with her conflicting identities as she contemplates a cell phone she used in Japan (\"Tokyo sat trapped inside it\"); a troubled patient who uses email both to criticize her therapist and to be reassured by her; a compulsive gambler who does not want to win steadily at video poker because a pattern of losing and winning keeps her more connected to the body of the machine. In these writings, we hear untold stories. We learn that received wisdom never goes far enough.
eBook
Evaluation of Rail Technology
Currently, the rail industry lacks a standardized approach to the human factors evaluation of new technologies in operational settings. While a number of human factors evaluation methods exist (such as task analysis, situation awareness measures, quasi-experiments), these are rarely tailored to the industry's needs. This book fills that gap by developing a toolkit of methods that can be used by people in the rail industry to evaluate the human factors implications of new technologies.
eBook
The distraction addiction : getting the information you need and the communication you want without enraging your family, annoying your colleagues, and destroying your soul
The question of our time: can we reclaim our lives in an age that feels busier and more distracting by the day? We have all found ourselves checking email at the dinner table, holding our breath while waiting for Outlook to load, or sitting hunched in front of a screen for an hour longer than we intended. Mobile devices and the web have invaded our lives, and this is a big idea book that addresses one of the biggest questions of our age: can we stay connected without diminishing our intelligence, attention spans, and ability to really live? Can we have it all? Here the author, a Stanford University technology guru, says yes. His book is packed with fascinating studies, compelling research, and crucial takeaways. Whether it is breathing while Facebook refreshes, or finding creative ways to take a few hours away from the digital crush, this book is about the ways to tune in without tuning out. - Publisher.
Book
The Sceptical Optimist
In The Paradox of Progress, Nicholas Agar challenges the central claims of 'radical optimism': that technological progress will automatically make us happier and healthier. Using recent psychological studies about human well-being, he instead presents a more realistic approach to understand the positive and negative issues that progress brings.
eBook