Reflecting on UN Sustainable Development Goal 9: Industries, Innovation and Infrastructure, Goal 10: Reduced inequalities and Goal 16: Peace, justice and strong institutions, our list looks at the potential for innovation and creative solutions to global social problems, whilst critically engaging with the risks, such as worsened social inequality and damage to human rights.
Subjects covered include the development of sustainable technology to help combat climate change, the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse data more efficiently, the way social media creates a space for people to organise international social activism and the need to balance our digital lives and retain data sovereignty, especially for the most vulnerable in society.
Bristol University Press and Policy Press are signed up to the UN SDG Publishers Compact. In Technology, data and society, we aim to address the following goals:
Technology, Data and Society
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- Type: Book x
- Type: Journal Article x
In today's digital societies, parenting is shaped by algorithms daily - in search engines, social media, kids' entertainment, the news and more. But how much are parents aware of the algorithms shaping their parenting and daily lives? How can they prepare for children’s futures in a world dominated by data, algorithms, automation and AI?
This groundbreaking study of 30 English families sheds light on parents’ hopes and fears, their experiences with algorithms in searching, sharing and consuming news and information, and their awareness and knowledge of algorithms at large.
Looking beyond tech skills and media panics, this book is an essential read for social scientists, policy-makers and general readers seeking to understand parenting in datafied societies.
The platform economy, powered by companies like Airbnb, Uber and Deliveroo, promised to revolutionize the way we work and live. But what are the actual benefits to our society and economy?
This book interrogates the ‘sharing economy’, showing how platform capitalism is not only shaped by business decisions, but is a result of struggles involving social movements, consumer politics and state interventions. It focuses in particular on the controversial tactics used by platform giants to avoid regulation.
Drawing on cutting-edge research and analysis, this book provides a critical overview of this important topic, and imagines the different possible futures of the platform economy.
How can we have meaningful public conversations in the algorithmic age?
This book explores how digital technologies shape our opinions and interactions, often in ways that limit our exposure to diverse perspectives and fuel polarization. Drawing on the ancient art of arguing all sides of a case, the book offers a way to revive public debate as a source of trust and legitimacy in democratic societies.
This is a timely and urgent book for anyone who cares about the future of democracy in the digital era.
What role do science and technology play in society? What is the nature of expert knowledge? What is science’s relation to democracy?
This introduction to science, technology, and society answers these questions, and more, by exploring contemporary research on topics such as expertise, activism, science policy, and innovation. It offers a comprehensive resource for considering the place that science and technology have in contemporary societies, and the roles that they can and should play.
Accessible to a non-specialist audience, it draws on a rich range of cases and examples, from nuclear activism in India to content moderation in Kenya. Framing science as always social, and society as always shaped by science and technology, it asks: what worlds do we want science and technology to bring into being?
Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
Some of the largest quantities of data produced today occur as the result of experiments taking place at Big Science facilities.
This book tells the story of a unique research journey following the people responsible for designing and implementing data management at a new Big Science facility, the European Spallation Source (ESS) in Lund, Sweden. It critically examines the idea of data as an absolute ‘truth’ and sheds light on the often underestimated, yet essential, contributions of these data experts.
Providing a unique glimpse into the inner workings of Big Science, this book fills an important gap in science and technology studies and critical data studies.
The concept of smart cities holds environmental promises: that digital technologies will reduce carbon emissions, air pollution and waste, and help address climate change.
Drawing on academic scholarship and two case studies from Manchester and Helsinki, this timely and accessible book examines what happens when these promises are broken, as they prioritise technological innovation rather than environmental care. The book reveals that smart cities’ vision of sustainable digital future obfuscates the environmental harms and social injustices that digitisation inflicts. The framework of “broken promises”, coined by the authors, centres environmental questions in analysing imaginaries and practices of smart cities.
This is a must read for anyone interested in the connections between digital technologies and environment justice.
From SARS to Zika, and Ebola to COVID-19, epidemics and pandemics have become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Each outbreak presents new challenges but the responses are often similar.
This important book explores the dimensions, dynamics and implications of emerging pandemic societies. Drawing on ideas from sociology and science and technology studies, it sheds new light on how pandemics are socially produced and, in turn, shape societies in areas such as governance, work and recreation, science and technology, education, and family life. It offers pointers to the future of pandemic societies, including the expansion of technologies of surveillance and control, as well as the prospects of social renewal created by economic and social disruption.
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
This book presents emerging themes and future directions in the interdisciplinary field of critical data studies, loosely themed around the notion of shifting response-abilities in a datafied world.
In each chapter an interdisciplinary group of scholars discuss a specific theme, ranging from questions around data power and the configuring of data subjects to the intersection of technology and the environment.
The book is an invaluable dialogue between disciplines that introduces readers to cutting edge arguments within the field. It will be a key resource for scholars and students who require a guide to this rapidly evolving area of research.
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence
Transhumanism is a philosophy which advocates for the use of technology to radically enhance human capacities.
This book interrogates the promises of transhumanism, arguing that it is deeply entwined with capitalist ideology. In an era of escalating crisis and soaring inequality, it casts doubt on a utopian techno-capitalist narrative of unending progress. In critiquing the transhumanist project, the book offers an alternative ethical framework for the future of life on the planet.
As the debates around the advancement of AI and corporate-led digital technologies intensify, this is an important read for academics as well as policy makers.
Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
This book delves into the complex and controversial realm of fertility care. It analyses the clash between evidence-based medicine and market dynamics in fertility treatments, with a unique focus on "add-on" treatments. It reveals how these contentious treatment options are now common practice and how they lead to an emerging market for hope.
With an interdisciplinary approach, this is an essential resource for readers in the fields of science and technology studies and medical sociology.
