Matching Items (12)
Description
This dissertation explores the megamachine, a prominent metaphor in American humanist and philosopher of technology, Lewis Mumford's Myth of the Machine series. The term refers critically to dynamic, regimented human capacities that drive scientific and technical innovation in society. Mumford's view of the nature of collectives focuses on qualities and patterns that emerge from the behavior of groups, societies, systems, and ecologies. It is my aim to reenergize key concepts about collective capacities drawn from Lewis Mumford's critique of historical and modern sociotechnical arrangements. I investigate the possibility of accessing those capacities through improved design for Technology Assessment (TA), formal practices that engage experts and lay citizens in the evaluation of complex scientific and technical issues.
I analyze the components of Mumford's megamachine and align key concerns in two pivotal works that characterize the impact of collective capacities on society: Bruno Latour's Pasteurization of France (1988) and Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power (1962). As I create a model of collective capacities in the sociotechnical according to the parameters of Mumford's megamachine, I rehabilitate two established ideas about the behavior of crowds and about the undue influence of technological systems on human behavior. I depart from Mumford's tactics and those of Canetti and Latour and propose a novel focus for STS on "sociotechnical crowds" as a meaningful unit of social measure. I make clear that Mumford's critique of the sociotechnical status quo still informs the conditions for innovation today.
Using mixed mode qualitative methods in two types of empirical field studies, I then investigate how a focus on the characteristics and components of collective human capacities in sociotechnical systems can affect the design and performance of TA. I propose a new model of TA, Emergent Technology Assessment (ETA), which includes greater public participation and recognizes the interrelationship among experience, affect and the material in mediating the innovation process. The resulting model -- the "soft" megamachine --introduces new strategies to build capacity for responsible innovation in society.
I analyze the components of Mumford's megamachine and align key concerns in two pivotal works that characterize the impact of collective capacities on society: Bruno Latour's Pasteurization of France (1988) and Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power (1962). As I create a model of collective capacities in the sociotechnical according to the parameters of Mumford's megamachine, I rehabilitate two established ideas about the behavior of crowds and about the undue influence of technological systems on human behavior. I depart from Mumford's tactics and those of Canetti and Latour and propose a novel focus for STS on "sociotechnical crowds" as a meaningful unit of social measure. I make clear that Mumford's critique of the sociotechnical status quo still informs the conditions for innovation today.
Using mixed mode qualitative methods in two types of empirical field studies, I then investigate how a focus on the characteristics and components of collective human capacities in sociotechnical systems can affect the design and performance of TA. I propose a new model of TA, Emergent Technology Assessment (ETA), which includes greater public participation and recognizes the interrelationship among experience, affect and the material in mediating the innovation process. The resulting model -- the "soft" megamachine --introduces new strategies to build capacity for responsible innovation in society.
ContributorsGano, Gretchen (Author) / Guston, David (Thesis advisor) / Miller, Clark (Thesis advisor) / Selin, Cynthia (Committee member) / Wetmore, Jameson (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This thesis examines the composition, flow rate, and recyclability of two abundant materials generated in modern society: municipal sewage sludge (SS) generated during conventional wastewater treatment, and single-use plastic packaging (specifically, plastic bottles) manufactured and dispersed by fast-moving consumer goods companies (FMCG). The study found the presence of 5 precious metals in both American and Chinese sewage sludges. 13 rare elements were found in American sewage sludge while 14 were found in Chinese sewage sludge. Modeling results indicated 251 to 282 million metric tons (MMT) of SS from 2022 to 2050, estimated to contain some 6.8 ± 0.5 MMT of valuable elements in the USA, the reclamation of which is valued at $24B ± $1.6B USD. China is predicted to produce between 819 - 910 MMT of SS between 2022 and 2050 containing an estimated 14.9 ± 1.7 MMT of valuable elements worth a cumulative amount of $94B ± 20B (Chapter 2 and 3). The 4th chapter modeled how much plastic waste Coca-Cola, PespiCo and Nestlé produced and globally dispersed in 21 years: namely an estimated 126 MMT ± 8.7 MMT of plastic. Some 15.6 MMT ± 1.3 MMT (12%) is projected to have become aquatic pollution costing estimated at $286B USD. Some 58 ± 5 MMT or 46% of the total mass were estimated to result in terrestrial plastic pollution, with only minor amounts of 9.9 ± 0.7 MMT, deemed actually recycled. Absent of change, the three companies are predicted to generate an additional 330 ± 15 MMT of plastic by 2050, thereby creating estimated externalities of $8 ± 0.4 trillion USD. The analysis suggests that a small subset of FMCG companies are well positioned to change the current trajectory of global plastic pollution and ocean plastic littering. Chapter 5 examined the barriers to Circular Economy. In an increasingly uncertain post pandemic world, it is becoming progressively important to conserve local resources and extract value from materials that are currently interpreted a “waste” rather than a current or potential future resource.
ContributorsBiyani, Nivedita (Author) / Halden, Rolf U. (Thesis advisor) / Allenby, Braden (Committee member) / Jalbert, Kirk (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Effective collaboration and cooperation across difference are at the heart of present and future sustainability challenges and solutions. Collaboration among social groups (intragenerational), across time (intergenerational), and across species (interspecies) is each central to achieving sustainability transitions in the 21st century. In practice, there are three types of differences that limit collaboration and cooperation toward sustainability outcomes: differences among social groups, differences across time, and differences across species. Each of these differences have corresponding cognitive biases that challenge collaboration. Social cognitive biases challenge collaboration among social groups; temporal cognitive biases challenge collaboration across time; and anthropocentric cognitive biases challenge collaboration across species. In this work, I present three correctives to collaboration challenges spanning the social, temporal, and species cognitive biases through intervention-specific methods that build beyond traditional framings of empathy, toward social, futures, and ecological empathy. By re-theorizing empathy across these domains, I seek to construct a multidimensional theory of empathy for sustainability, and suggest methods to build it, to bridge differences among people, time horizons, and species for sustainability practice.
ContributorsLambert, Lauren Marie-Jasmine (Author) / Selin, Cynthia (Thesis advisor) / Schoon, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Tomblin, David (Committee member) / Berbés-Blázquez, Marta (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
This research interconnects three case studies to examine survivability as a framework through which to explore historic, current, and future collaborations in the face of existential threats, social-ecological-technical uncertainty, and indeterminate futures. Leveraging archival research, document analysis, and ethnographic field work, this study focuses on artist Georgia O’Keeffe’s mid-20th-century construction of a nuclear fallout shelter, the COVID Tracking Project’s response work in the first year of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, and three decades of future-facing scientific research performed at Biosphere 2. These cases demonstrate multidisciplinary collaborations across individual, organizational, and institutional configurations at local, national, and international scales in threat contexts spanning nuclear weapons, pandemics, and increasing climate catastrophe. Within each of the three cases, I examine protagonists’ collaborations within knowledge systems, their navigation of scientific disciplinary boundaries, their acknowledgement and negotiation of credibility and expertise, and how their engagements with these systems impact individual and collective survivability. By combining complex adaptive systems (CAS) framings with Science and Technology Studies concepts, I explore ways in which transformations of hierarchy and epistemological boundaries impact, and particularly increase, social-ecological-technical systems (SETS) survivability. Including notions of who and what systems deem worthy of protection, credibility, expertise and agency, imaginations, and how concepts of systems survivability operate, this work builds a conceptual scaffolding to better understand the dynamic workings of quests for survival in the 21st century.
ContributorsWasserman, Sherri (Author) / Selin, Cynthia (Thesis advisor) / Richter, Jennifer (Committee member) / Jalbert, Kirk (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Northeastern Arizona has experienced a recent increase in helium extraction activity. This qualitative case study articulates and explores various sociotechnical imaginaries – or, collectively produced social justifications for technological decisions and systems – that inform this new stage of underground helium extraction. Leveraging two years of interviews, document analysis, and participant observations to understand and interrogate the political and cultural origins of perceptions around helium extraction, I examined how these imaginaries and associated power dynamics influenced communication within and between stakeholder groups. In order to mitigate the power differentials between stakeholder groups, and put these imaginaries in conversation with each other, I led the development of a series of short videos that explain controversial technoscientific concepts from this research. These videos were produced in continuous collaboration with multiple disparate stakeholders, including activists, regulators, and industry members, in order to create a space for a productive conversation and reflection to explore tensions between conflicting points of view between stakeholders. This iterative work used the imaginaries of helium extraction in Arizona to produce a space for collective deliberation that can result in negotiated shared knowledge through brokered dialogue amongst these disparate groups and their competing visions of Arizona’s helium futures.
ContributorsBruhis, Noa (Author) / Jalbert, Kirk (Thesis advisor) / Richter, Jennifer (Thesis advisor) / Williams, Wendy R (Committee member) / Jenkins, Lekelia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Images are ubiquitous in communicating complex information about the future. From political messages to extreme weather warnings, they generate understanding, incite action, and inform expectations with real impact today. The future has come into sharp focus in recent years. Issues like climate change, gene editing, and smart cities are pushing policy makers, scientists, and designers to rethink how society plans and prepares for tomorrow. While academic and practice communities have increasingly turned their gaze toward the future, little attention is paid to how it is depicted and even less to the role visualization technologies play in depicting it. Visualization technologies are those that transform non-visual information into 2D or 3D imagery and generate depictions of certain phenomena, real or perceived. This research helps to fill this gap by examining the role visualization technologies play in how individuals know and make decisions about the future.
This study draws from three phases of research set in the context of urban development, where images of the future are generated by architects and circulated by built environment professionals to affect client and public decision-making. I begin with a systematic review of professional design literature to identify norms related to visualization. I then conduct in-depth interviews with expert architects to draw out how visualization technologies are used to influence client decision-making. I dive into how different tools manage the future and generate different forms of certainty, uncertainty, persuasion, and risk. Complementing the review and interviews is a case study on ASU at Mesa City Center, a development project aimed at revitalizing downtown Mesa, Arizona. Analysis highlights how project-specific visual tools affect decision-making and the role that client imagination and inference play in understanding and preference. This research unpacks the social, technical, and emotional knowledge embedded in visualization technologies and reveals how they affect decision-making. Information about the future is uniquely mediated by each technology with decision-making bound up in larger sociopolitical processes aimed at reducing uncertainty, building trust, and managing expectations. This suggests that the visual tools we use to depict the future are much more dynamic and influential than they are given credit for.
This study draws from three phases of research set in the context of urban development, where images of the future are generated by architects and circulated by built environment professionals to affect client and public decision-making. I begin with a systematic review of professional design literature to identify norms related to visualization. I then conduct in-depth interviews with expert architects to draw out how visualization technologies are used to influence client decision-making. I dive into how different tools manage the future and generate different forms of certainty, uncertainty, persuasion, and risk. Complementing the review and interviews is a case study on ASU at Mesa City Center, a development project aimed at revitalizing downtown Mesa, Arizona. Analysis highlights how project-specific visual tools affect decision-making and the role that client imagination and inference play in understanding and preference. This research unpacks the social, technical, and emotional knowledge embedded in visualization technologies and reveals how they affect decision-making. Information about the future is uniquely mediated by each technology with decision-making bound up in larger sociopolitical processes aimed at reducing uncertainty, building trust, and managing expectations. This suggests that the visual tools we use to depict the future are much more dynamic and influential than they are given credit for.
ContributorsSelkirk, Kaethe (Author) / Selin, Cynthia (Thesis advisor) / Wylie, Ruth (Committee member) / Boradkar, Prasad (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
This study is a qualitative exploration into the roles and social identities that Research Engineering Undergraduates (REU) enacted while engaging the public through designing serious games. At present, the science communication field is searching for ways to train the next generation of scientists to practice public engagement with science in a way that fosters dialogue with the public, however, little research has been done on training undergraduates in this regard. This exploratory study seeks to determine what opportunities a game design project in a summer program in solar energy engineering research provides undergraduates to that end. The project includes REUs designing games through a facilitated design process and then sharing them with the public at arts festivals. Through discourse analysis, data was analyzed through the lens of cohesion in order to interpret what roles and social identities REUs enacted as well as members of the public who play the games. Based on the analysis of 12 REUs and 39 player participants, findings indicate REUs most often enacted the science game designer social identity and science educator role during the public event. Less often, REUs enacted a sociotechnical role to determine the player's relationship to science/solar energy. Also, less often did they position themselves directly as scientists. For the most part, REUs reproduced the dissemination model of science communication in an interactive way and with an element of reflexivity. However, during public engagement events, dialogue with the public occurred when REUs enacted open-ended roles that enabled members of the public to contribute to the conversation by assuming a range of roles and social identities rather than positioning them into a single role. Dialogue was also supported when REUs were responsive and shifted their role/ social identity to correspond with the public’s enactment. Some players enacted a local Arizonan social identity in response to the open-ended role and game content about Arizona’s solar energy. The project afforded REUs the opportunity to learn illustration and reformulation to communicate science concepts. Also, REUs referenced their game during illustration and reformulation, using it as a tool to teach science, be a science game designer, and other enactments. More research is needed to determine how science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) undergraduates learning science communication can design serious games and conduct player reflections in such a way to promote dialogue to a greater degree than observed in this study.
ContributorsEvans, Mathew (Author) / Jordan, Michelle (Thesis advisor) / Koro, Mirka (Thesis advisor) / Jalbert, Kirk (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
This dissertation focuses on water security in terms of sustaining socio-economic development, livelihoods, and human well-being. Using the double exposure framework, I analyze the combined effect of climate change and economic development on water security in the Philippines. There is a need to examine how the combination of these two processes aggravate existing inequalities related to water security among different groups of people, and also analyze how these two processes can combine to increase stakeholders’ vulnerability to water-related shocks and stresses. The Philippines has been rated as one of the countries that is most vulnerable to climate change due to its exposure to extreme climate events and sea level rise. At the same time, the Philippines is currently undergoing an economic transition from a predominantly agricultural country to one where industry and services play a larger role. This dissertation zeroes in on the water security of municipalities in the Philippines, which were sorted into different syndromes based on a combination of their risk to future hydro-climatic changes and economic growth trends. Four syndromes which covered 73% of the population then emerged. By comparing five case study municipalities drawn from these four syndromes, I offer insights into how different combinations of climatic and economic factors can impact water security, and which combination could have the lowest water security in the future. Through analyzing the results of focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews, I also explore the variation of perceptions and collaborative strategies of stakeholders regarding their current and future water security. While each municipality had different climate and economic vulnerabilities, they shared largely similar water security perceptions and used the same strategies.
ContributorsLorenzo, Theresa Marie (Author) / Kinzig, Ann (Thesis advisor) / David, Carlos Primo (Committee member) / Perrings, Charles (Committee member) / Schoon, Michael (Committee member) / Selin, Cynthia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
When the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) auctioned off federal lands in the Holbrook Basin area in Arizona, this action set off a furor among concerned residents and groups in Arizona. Under new rules, the BLM did not have to conduct a public input or environmental analysis before the lease auction. Furthermore, evidence suggests that oil and gas companies may use techniques similar to fracking to obtain helium gas from the Holbrook Basin. Through the analysis of the history of fracking in the United States (U.S.) and Arizona as well as fracking bans in four key states, New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Florida, this paper will illustrate some of the ways Arizona can go about preventing fracking. These case studies suggest that the best way to do this is to focus on the local level, specifically zoning regulations, and then move to the state level.
ContributorsHegde, Sakshi (Author) / Jalbert, Kirk (Thesis director) / Bruhis, Noa (Committee member) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-12
Description
Climate change has necessitated the transition from non-renewable energy sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas to renewable, low-carbon energy sources such as solar, wind, and hydroelectric. These energy sources, although much better equipped to reduce carbon-induced climate change, require materials that pollute the environment when mined and can release toxic waste during processing and disposal. Critical minerals are used in low-carbon renewable energy, and they are subject to both the environmental issues that accompany regular mineral extraction as well as issues related to scarcity from geopolitical issues, trade policy, and geological rarity. Tellurium is a critical mineral produced primarily as a byproduct of copper and used in cadmium-telluride (CdTe) solar panels. As these solar panels become more common, the problems that arise with many critical minerals’ usage (pollution, unfair distribution, human health complications) become more apparent. Looking at these issues through an energy justice framework can help to ensure availability, sustainability, inter/intragenerational equity, and accountability, and this framework can provide a more nuanced understanding of the costs and the benefits that will accrue with the transition to low-carbon, renewable energy. Energy justice issues surrounding the extraction of critical minerals will become increasingly prevalent as more countries pledge to have a zero-carbon future.
ContributorsMaas, Samantha (Author) / Jalbert, Kirk (Thesis director) / Chester, Mikhail (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Public Affairs (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2022-05