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Date sent: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 22:07:24 -0500From: Mark Douglas Whitaker <mrkdwhit@wallet.com> I would suggest the website www.rafi.org, particularly about biotechnology. You may be interested in the 'yellow rice' issue, of which there have been several summaries in the New York Times (forget which sections), over the past month. Something on this in the Nation as well. www.thenation.com. Regards, Mark Whitaker University of Wisconsin-Madison >Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2001 14:44:15 +0100 >From: JEREMY TURNER <JCTU@jmco89.freeserve.co.uk> > >FROM: Jeremy Turner, Sculpture Department, Bretton Hall College of the >University of Leeds. > >e-mail: JCTU@jmco89.freeserve.co.uk > >I'm a lecturer in the Sculpture Department at Bretton Hall, also >completing a PhD by practice within the school of Art & Design. Whilst >practice based, there is a theoretical element to this research project, >and my thesis title is 'Sculpture, Technology & the Invention of >Necessity'. > >Briefly, one of my prime interests both within the thesis, and to a >certain extent within the studio work, is our relationship with >technology. To be more precise, how technology changes and mutates as it >is acted upon over time by the social, economic and political dynamic. How >as a sculptor, I feel like one of the few people having input from start >to finish, with absolute accountability as concerns the making process. > >An example from the thesis charts the changes, and reasons for change, >from the building and use of canals, to the Stockton & Darlington Railway, >Liverpool & Manchester Railway, the Great Central Railway's main line to >London. The idea being that canal technology was on the whole adequate for >the time, the S & D R utilised existent technologies and had sound >justification, the L & M R expanded the idea, and the G C R had little >valid reasoning behind it other than the ego of its chairman and perceived >financial gain for its investors. > >In short, how some technologies are a very good and necessary idea. How >others have their necessity invented, not as a result of need, but as a >vehicle for fiscal gain. > >Can anyone suggest a recent (and perhaps topical) text, paper, book etc. >that would allow me to develop a twentieth / twenty-first century slant on >the concept of socio-technological dynamics? > >Many thanks, > >Jeremy Turner.
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