Reimagining Alternative Technology For Design In The 21st Century

Reimagining Alternative Technology for Design in the 21st Century presents a new approach to design that harnesses still-valuable alternative, traditional and abandoned technologies alongside the creation of new ones to address contemporary global problems. It focuses on design opportunities that reduce energy and material consumption to tackle issues such as climate change and pollution in industrialized economies. The book takes the reader on a journey surveying different facets of human activity to identify underused and discarded technologies that could be indispensable today. It critically addresses newer approaches to design and technology by comparing them to existing alternatives, unpacking examples including air conditioning with smart thermostats, electric lighting, durable reusable products, domestic maintenance tools and methods of transportation. Written for practicing designers and students in industrial design, architecture, sustainable design and human-centered design, this book provides new ideas and tools for creating more useful, energy-and-resource-efficient product designs and systems.

Reference service, the idea that librarians provide direct assistance to users, has been a central function of libraries for over a century. Today's libraries are even more complex and intimidating to new users than libraries of the past, and the technical and social contexts in which users experience their library's resources add to this complexity. The availability of a friendly librarian who helps users find materials, search for information on a topic, interpret citations, identify quality information, and format bibliographies has become a standard component of what libraries do. However, changes in technologies, economics, and user populations are causing many libraries to question the need and function of traditional reference services. This book examines how library services meet user needs in the twenty-first century. Many libraries are asking key questions about reference services, such as: Should librarians be on call waiting for users or out in the community promoting the library? Should we assign staff to help users one-on-one or is it more effective to assign them to build and use tools to teach users how to find and evaluate information? Will we continue to purchase commercial reference sources or just use Wikipedia and other free resources on the web? With the proliferation of information available today, how can we help users evaluate search results and select the best resources that they can find? And how do we evaluate the effectiveness of reference services? Through contributions from the leading scholars and practitioners in the field, this volume addresses such issues and how they affect practices in public and academic libraries. In addition, it presents perspectives from the publishing community and the creators of discovery tools. Each section is enhanced by short case studies that highlight real-world practices and experiences.

"Digital by Design is a wide-ranging survey that considers the work of those visionaries who are reimagining the relationship between technology, design products, immersive environments and human interaction for the twenty-first century. The result is a captivating assessment of pioneering approaches in art and design that encompasses a broad spectrum of humanist values, humour, magic and sensory experiences." "Leading multi-disciplinary art and design practice Troika has selected more than 100 objects, products and installations that exemplify this progressive new wave of technologically infused art and design. The book's bold presentation is indicative of Troika's hands-on knowledge of these fields and their transformative practices."--BOOK JACKET.

The power of transformative design, multidisciplinary leaps, and diversity: lessons from a Black professional’s journey through corporate America. Design offers so much more than an aesthetically pleasing logo or banner, a beautification add-on after the heavy lifting. In Reimagining Design, Kevin Bethune shows how design provides a unique angle on problem-solving—how it can be leveraged strategically to cultivate innovation and anchor multidisciplinary teamwork. As he does so, he describes his journey as a Black professional through corporate America, revealing the power of transformative design, multidisciplinary leaps, and diversity. Bethune, who began as an engineer at Westinghouse, moved on to Nike (where he designed Air Jordans), and now works as a sought-after consultant on design and innovation, shows how design can transform both individual lives and organizations. In Bethune’s account, diversity, equity, and inclusion emerge as a recurring theme. He shows how, as we leverage design for innovation, we also need to consider the broader ecological implications of our decisions and acknowledge the threads of systemic injustice in order to realize positive change. His book is for anyone who has felt like the “other”—and also for allies who want to encourage anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-ageist behaviors in the workplace. Design transformation takes leadership—leaders who do not act as gatekeepers but, with agility and nimbleness, build teams that mirror the marketplace. Design in harmony with other disciplines can be incredibly powerful; multidisciplinary team collaboration is the foundation of future innovation. With insight and compassion, Bethune provides a framework for bringing this about.

Students often face challenges in a swiftly advancing Computer Science Education (CSE), where technologies evolve rapidly, and concepts unfold with overwhelming intricacies. As society becomes interwoven with technology, how essential is the integration of CSE into the educational framework to adequately equip future generations for the complexities of the digital era? Navigating Computer Science Education in the 21st Century advocates integrating CSE into curricula, underlining its crucial role in early childhood development. The book grapples with the challenge of introducing children to technology responsibly, addressing concerns about unmonitored screen time while emphasizing the necessity of evidence-based approaches for educators. Within these pages, effective teaching strategies are linked to successes in CSE. The book explores learner-centered teaching methodologies in computer science, emphasizing individualized instruction, active learning, and collaborative approaches. It evaluates the effectiveness of traditional lecture-based teaching against more innovative strategies such as game-based learning and collaborative approaches. By presenting studies that delve into the impact of these strategies on student engagement and motivation, the book equips educators with the insights needed to make informed decisions tailored to diverse learning environments.

From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the “New Jim Code,” she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life. This illuminating guide provides conceptual tools for decoding tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we ourselves manufacture. Visit the book's free Discussion Guide here.

Reimagining Digital Learning for Sustainable Development is a comprehensive playbook for education leaders, policy makers, and other key stakeholders leading the modernization of learning and development in their institutions as they build a high value knowledge economy and prepare learners for jobs that don't yet exist. Currently, nearly every aspect of human activity, including the ways we absorb and apply learning, is influenced by disruptive digital technologies. The jobs available today are no longer predicators of future employment, and current and future workforce members will need to augment their competencies through a lifetime of continuous upskilling and reskilling to meet the demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This book features curated insights and real-world cases from thought leaders throughout the world and identifies major shifts in content formats, pedagogic approaches, technology frameworks, user and design experiences, and learner roles and expectations that will reshape our institutions, including those in emerging economies. The agile, lean, and cost-effective strategies proposed here will function in scalable and flexible bandwidth environments, enabling education leaders and practitioners to transform brick-and-mortar learning organizations into digital and blended ecosystems and to achieve the United Nation’s ambitious Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Chapter 18 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The value of personal data has traditionally been understood in ethical terms as a safeguard for personality rights such as human dignity and privacy. However, we have entered an era where personal data are mined, traded and monetized in the process of creating added value - often in terms of free services including efficient search, support for social networking and personalized communications. This volume investigates whether the economic value of personal data can be realized without compromising privacy, fairness and contextual integrity. It brings scholars and scientists from the disciplines of computer science, law and social science together with policymakers, engineers and entrepreneurs with practical experience of implementing personal data management. The resulting collection will be of interest to anyone concerned about privacy in our digital age, especially those working in the field of personal information management, whether academics, policymakers, or those working in the private sector.

This book examines the history of creative applications of photovoltaic (PV) solar power, including sound art, wearable technology, public art, industrial design, digital media, building integrated design, and many others. The growth in artists and designers incorporating solar power into their work reflects broader social, economic, and political events. As the cost of PV cells has come down, they have become more accessible and have found their way into a growing range of design applications and artistic practices. As climate change continues to transform our environment and becomes a greater public concern, the importance of integrating sustainable energy technologies into our culture grows as well. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, design history, design studies, environmental studies, environmental humanities, and sustainable energy design.