Dark side of technology.
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| Author / Creator: | Townsend, Peter. |
|---|---|
| Imprint: | Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, [2016]. ©2017. |
| Description: | xi, 306 pages ; 23 cm. |
| Language: | English |
| Subject: | |
| Format: | Print Book |
| URL for this record: | http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/10982652 |
Table of Contents:
- 1. Have We the Knowledge, Willpower, and Determination to Survive?
- 2. Technology and Survival-Are They Compatible?
- Disaster movie scenarios
- Who will be vulnerable?
- The villain
- Satellite loss and air traffic
- What will happen in the modest sunspot scenario?
- A ground-based view of this modest event
- History of auroras and sunspot activity
- Vulnerability of modern interconnected power grid networks
- Consequences of power grid failures
- The real disaster situation
- When will it happen?
- How bad could it be?
- Wider area consequences of grid failures
- Which areas of the globe are at risk?
- Is there any good news?
- Knowledge is power and absolutely essential for survival
- How should we view technology?
- 3. Natural Disasters and Civilization
- A fascination with danger
- Events that happen only on geological timescales
- Earthquakes and volcanoes
- Future eruptions
- European effects from Icelandic volcanoes
- Tsunamis and floods
- Rain storms
- Ice ages
- Attempts at climate prediction
- Disease and plagues
- How bleak are our prospects?
- Weapons of mass destruction
- The good news
- 4. Good Technologies with Bad Side Effects
- Technological changes within our control
- Beauty, style, and fashion
- Progress no matter what
- Acceptance of new ideas
- Historic examples of unfortunate technology
- Victorian kitchens
- Hindsight so far
- 5. From Trains to Transistors
- Industrial revolutions
- Food-small changes and big effects
- The dark side of the Industrial Revolution
- Understanding pollutants in our own time
- Pollutants and climate change
- Arithmetic for sceptics
- Other greenhouse gases
- Why are we reluctant to solve the problem of greenhouse gases?
- Ozone-our shield against ultraviolet light
- Twenty-first century technology control of trace contaminants
- Biological sensitivity to chemicals at levels of parts per billion
- Potential future difficulties
- How do we take control?
- 6. Food, Survival, and Resources
- Our caveman conditioning
- Can we produce enough food?
- How much food do we actually need?
- Technology and obesity
- More examples of our sensitivity to trace contaminants
- Catalysis, enzymes, diet, and health
- How can we recognize when there are delayed side effects?
- How pure is our food?
- Conclusion
- 7. The 'Silent Spring' Revisited
- Food, survival, and technology
- From hunting to farming
- Early hunter gathering
- Growth of cities and long-range food transport-early Rome
- Repeated patterns from later European nations
- Twentieth-century agricultural technology
- The bombshell of 1962
- Genetic time bombs
- How successful is a monoculture with pesticides?
- Farming attitudes and black grass
- A return to a diversity of breeds
- Fishing
- Technology of mutations
- Water
- Optimism or pessimism?
- 8. Medicine-Expectations and Reality
- Medicine-the scale of the problem
- Attitudes and expectations from experts and the public
- Understanding side effects and drug testing
- Do we need such an immense medical system?
- Personal contacts between patients and doctors
- Gullibility and marketing
- Self-destruction
- The financial and health costs of our own failings and weaknesses
- Do we understand statistics?
- The dilemma of improving medical diagnosis
- Where next?
- 9. Knowledge Loss from Changing Language
- Language and why are humans so successful
- Decay of language and understanding
- Information survival
- Lost languages
- Language and technology
- Language evolution
- Reading and understanding past languages
- The challenge of translation
- Language and context
- Information loss in art images and pictures
- Music and technology
- 10. Decay of Materials and Information Loss from Technology
- Information and knowledge
- Input technology and data loss
- Information loss from technology of materials
- Writing information to computers
- Successes and replacements of media for musical recordings
- CD storage
- Domesday Book-parchment success and electronic failure
- Text, graphics, and photographic storage
- A 'law' of the speed of written information loss
- Pictorial information loss
- Images, photography, and electronics
- Survival of electronic image storage
- Computer power and information loss
- Patterns in data storage
- A broader canvas of the half-life concept
- What are the possible solutions for data retention?
- The final question-will we be remembered?
- 11. Technology, the New Frontier for Crime and Terror
- How to succeed in crime with minimal risk
- Smaller-scale computer crimes
- The UK scale of cybercrime
- Hacking and security
- Effective anti-hacking
- Espionage and security
- Mobile phones, cars, and homes
- Medical records
- Distortions of existing data
- Technology and terrorism
- The future
- 12. Technology-Driven Social Isolation
- Isolation driven by technology
- Isolating technologies and the young
- Isolating technologies for adults
- Job hunting
- Access to fast communications-who really has it?
- Electronic access for older people
- Inflation and self-isolation
- Physical problems of computers and smartphones
- Age and mobile phones
- Predictive text
- Age-related changes to sound and light
- Technology, colour vision, and ageing
- Will designers adjust their electronics for the elderly?
- Advanced medical centres
- Can we improve?
- 13. Consumerism and Obsolescence
- Obsolescence and marketing
- Social status and image
- Acceptable or commercially driven obsolescence
- Replacements before obsolescence
- Armaments and warfare
- 14. Rejection of Knowledge and Information
- How eager are we to learn?
- Rejection from distrust, religion, and culture
- Excessive reliance on initial opinions
- Information loss from an excess of data
- An example of plate tectonics
- Difficulties for Copernicus
- Whom should we believe?
- Information rejection from geographic isolation, xenophobia, religion, and prejudice
- News coverage
- Failure to exploit resources
- Parliamentary representation and practice
- The way forward
- 15. Hindsight, Foresight, Radical Suggestions, and a Grain of Hope
- Civilization and our dependence on technology
- Hindsight on solar emissions and modern technology
- Topics where we can control the relevant technologies
- Foresight, resources, and food
- The health industry
- Benefits of a smaller world population
- Ideas to produce a revolution in human attitudes
- Technology and political seating plans
- The benefits of full equality for women
- The educational disaster of war
- The two faces of technology
- Further Reading
