Harvesting communityhttps://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/152024-03-29T08:14:01Z2024-03-29T08:14:01ZEnergy Poverty, Practice, and PolicyButler, Catherinehttps://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/579132024-03-27T12:05:56Z2022-01-01T00:00:00ZEnergy Poverty, Practice, and Policy
Butler, Catherine
This Open Access book examines the implications of welfare policy for energy poverty and engages with key conceptual debates at the forefront of energy demand research. Academic work on energy poverty has rarely been brought into conversation with practice-theory-based approaches to energy use and sustainability. This book reveals how novel insights can be made visible through combining these different ways of thinking about energy demand issues. It presents a distinctive approach to energy poverty that places inequalities at the heart of debates about the advancing energy intensity of contemporary societies.
2022-01-01T00:00:00ZReligion and Governance in England’s Emerging Colonial Empire, 1601–1698Smith, Haig Z.https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/524212024-03-27T06:16:16Z2022-01-01T00:00:00ZReligion and Governance in England’s Emerging Colonial Empire, 1601–1698
Smith, Haig Z.
This open access book explores the role of religion in England's overseas companies and the formation of English governmental identity abroad in the seventeenth century. Drawing on research into the Virginia, East India, Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New England and Levant Companies, it offers a comparative global assessment of the inextricable links between the formation of English overseas government and various models of religious governance across England's emerging colonial empire. While these approaches to governance varied from company to company, each sought to regulate the behaviour of their personnel, as well as the numerous communities and faiths which fell within their jurisdiction. This book provides a crucial reassessment of the seventeenth-century foundations of British imperial governance.
2022-01-01T00:00:00ZOpen Science: the Very IdeaMiedema, Frankhttps://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/514982024-03-26T14:05:48Z2022-01-01T00:00:00ZOpen Science: the Very Idea
Miedema, Frank
This open access book provides a broad context for the understanding of current problems of science and of the different movements aiming to improve the societal impact of science and research. The author offers insights with regard to ideas, old and new, about science, and their historical origins in philosophy and sociology of science, which is of interest to a broad readership. The book shows that scientifically grounded knowledge is required and helpful in understanding intellectual and political positions in various discussions on the grand challenges of our time and how science makes impact on society. The book reveals why interventions that look good or even obvious, are often met with resistance and are hard to realize in practice. Based on a thorough analysis, as well as personal experiences in aids research, university administration and as a science observer, the author provides - while being totally open regarding science's limitations- a realistic narrative about how research is conducted, and how reliable ‘objective’ knowledge is produced. His idea of science, which draws heavily on American pragmatism, fits in with the global Open Science movement. It is argued that Open Science is a truly and historically unique movement in that it translates the analysis of the problems of science into major institutional actions of system change in order to improve academic culture and the impact of science, engaging all actors in the field of science and academia.
2022-01-01T00:00:00ZArtificial Intelligence for a Better FutureStahl, Bernd Carstenhttps://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/482282024-03-26T10:55:05Z2021-01-01T00:00:00ZArtificial Intelligence for a Better Future
Stahl, Bernd Carsten
This open access book proposes a novel approach to Artificial Intelligence (AI) ethics. AI offers many advantages: better and faster medical diagnoses, improved business processes and efficiency, and the automation of boring work. But undesirable and ethically problematic consequences are possible too: biases and discrimination, breaches of privacy and security, and societal distortions such as unemployment, economic exploitation and weakened democratic processes. There is even a prospect, ultimately, of super-intelligent machines replacing humans. The key question, then, is: how can we benefit from AI while addressing its ethical problems? This book presents an innovative answer to the question by presenting a different perspective on AI and its ethical consequences. Instead of looking at individual AI techniques, applications or ethical issues, we can understand AI as a system of ecosystems, consisting of numerous interdependent technologies, applications and stakeholders. Developing this idea, the book explores how AI ecosystems can be shaped to foster human flourishing. Drawing on rich empirical insights and detailed conceptual analysis, it suggests practical measures to ensure that AI is used to make the world a better place.
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