VTechWorks Repository :: Browsing by Author "Hirsh, Richard F."

Browsing by Author "Hirsh, Richard F."

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Adaptation and validation of a technology attitude scale for use by American teachers at the middle school level
Jeffrey, Thomas J. (Virginia Tech, 1993-11-05)
The purpose of this study was to adapt and validate the Technology Attitude Scale (TAS) for use by American teachers at the middle school level. The study provided an instrument for American middle school teachers to determine students' attitudes toward technology and concepts of technology. The Technology Attitude Scale (TAS) , an adaptation of a Dutch instrument consisting of three sections, was used to collect descriptive information. The first section of the instrument obtained demographic information about the respondents including: (1) age (2) grade level (3) gender (4) school location (rural, urban) (5) respondents involvement with technology education. The second section obtained information about students' attitudes toward technology. There were 26 items divided over 6 subscales, (interest, role pattern, consequences, difficulty, curriculum, and career). Students responded by using a five choice Likert-type scale with 3 to 5 items per subscale. The third section obtained information about the students' concept of technology, measuring cognitive or knowledge aspects based on 5 generally accepted characteristics of the concept technology. There were 28 items divided over 4 subscales, (technology and society, technology and science, technology and skills, and technology and pillars). Content validity was determined through a Panel of Experts consisting of five individuals with expertise in middle school education. The study population included five middle schools in Virginia. It consisted of a Pilot Study (N = 48) and a Large Group Administration (N =185). Statistical analysis included reliability measures using Cronbach's homogeneity coefficient alpha (Attitude Scales) and KuderRichardson 20 (Concept Scales) with attention to demographic information. Both the Attitude Scales (overall correlation .81) and the Concept Scales (overall correlation .83) met the minimum criterion (.60). The Technology Attitude Scale (TAS) has been adapted and validated for use by American teachers at the middle school level.
The Appalachian Power Company Along the New River: The Defeat of the Blue Ridge Project in Historical Perspective
Woodard, Robert Seth (Virginia Tech, 2006-05-11)
The Appalachian Power Company is an operating company of the American Electric Power Company, the largest electricity producing private electric system in the United States since 1953. The Appalachian Power Company held almost exclusive development rights along the New River since its 1911 charter. From then until the 1940s, it built a few small dams, a very large hydroelectric dam with the highest generating capacity of its time, and the largest steam plant in Virginia on the New River. Besides a few navigation issues, conflicting developments, and brief clashes with the federal government, seen in Chapter Two of this thesis, the Appalachian Power Company's developments along the New River went largely unchallenged until the late-1960s. The Blue Ridge Project was the utility's next large hydroelectric project on the New River. It was slated to impound the waters of the upper New River in Grayson County, Virginia, with two reservoirs extending into the river's headwaters in the counties of Ashe and Alleghany in northwestern North Carolina. Though the initial project met no serious opposition, environmental lawyers and the State of North Carolina defeated a considerably enlarged version of the proposal after a legal battle lasting over a decade. Why was this double impoundment not successfully constructed? What had changed in the last decades to influence Appalachian Power's previously unchallenged right to generate electricity along the New River? The purpose of this thesis is to answer these questions.
Astronomers and the Hubble space telescope: an historical analysis
Johnston, Peter J. (Virginia Tech, 1992-07-05)
In this thesis I describe a period in the Hubble Space Telescope's history during which a relatively small number of astronomers worked to encourage their colleagues to support the telescope project. I analyze astronomers' behavior in terms of the various problems which they faced. I argue that astronomical community came to support the project in part because the telescope's advocates succeeded in separating technological issues from economic ones. I also suggest that separating these two kinds of issues may have contributed to the circumstances which led to the telescope's well-publicized defects.
Brothers professionally and socially: the rise of local engineering clubs during the Gilded Age
Männikkö, Nancy Farm (Virginia Tech, 1997-10-27)
Scholars in the history and sociology of engineering in the United States have commented critically on the unwillingness of twentieth century engineers to participate actively in politics. Alfred Chandler, for example, has noted the absence of engineers in Progressive Era reform movements, while Edwin T. Layton Jr has criticized engineers in the 1920s for an excessive focus on sterile status seeking. This perceived lack of twentieth century engineering activism is especially puzzling given that nineteenth-century American engineers and engineering societies did not hesitate to lobby openly for clean water, smoke abatement, municipal reform, and numerous other issues.
A comparative analysis of reforms in organizing curricula and methods of secondary science instruction in the United States during the last decades of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Turpin, Pamela C. (Virginia Tech, 1993)
This study involved a comparative analysis of reforms in the organization and structure of curricula and instruction in science education in the United States during the last decades of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A review of literature of these periods revealed similar concerns and goals for science instructional reform in schools. With the use of primary and secondary sources from these decades, a comparison of the conditions surrounding the reform movements was made. The author explored such concerns as educational norms, aims, values, customs, curricula content, instructional methods, psychological bases and their relationships with the technological and scientific cultures of the times. This comparison characterized common factors associated with the two reform movements. A historical characterization of the two reform periods identified relationships and responses of science education reform to social, educational, scientific, technological, and economic influences. These relationships and responses represent some of the common factors that late-nineteenth century and late-twentieth century reform movements in science education share. The author determined that although the terms, phrases, and jargon used by late-nineteenth century science education reformers sound similar to those used today, the reform efforts are not as similar as they seem. Different meanings of reform terminology used by educators of the two time periods resulted in science education means and goals that are distinct for each period, although the terminology used to describe these ideals sounds and appears very similar. This study shows how science education reforms in the late-nineteenth and late-twentieth centuries responded to the world of which they were a part, and how under apparent similar conditions, responses of reformers appear similar, but in reality are different.
Comparison of Students' Product Creativity Using a Computer Simulation Activity versus a Hands-on Activity in Technology Education
Michael, Kurt Y. (Virginia Tech, 2000-05-10)
The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of a computer simulation activity versus a hands-on activity on students' product creativity, originality, and usefulness. Fifty-eight middle school technology education students from Northern Virginia participated in the study. Subjects were randomly assigned to either a computer simulation or hands-on treatment group. The computer simulation group used a Lego-type brick simulator to construct creative products on the computer; whereas, the hands-on treatment group used real LEGOÂ® bricks to construct their creative products. The hands-on groups' products were collected by the researcher and copied into the computer simulation program. Both groups' products were printed using a color printer. The printed products were evaluated by expert judges using a creative product semantic differential scale. This study showed that there was no significant difference in product creativity scores among the computer simulation and the hands-on treatment group. The null hypothesis was accepted. Findings suggested that it was possible to use a computer simulation activity in place of a hands-on activity and still maintain product creativity, originality, and usefulness.
Conceptualizing technological change: technology transfer in the green revolution
Parayil, Govindan (Virginia Tech, 1990)
Technological change, and technology transfer as an aspect of this process, is examined by providing a comparative assessment of models of this phenomenon from economics, history, sociology, and neo-Schumpeterian-evolutionary studies. The Green Revolution, which is used as the empirical basis for testing these models, is generally referred to as the change in agricultural technology observed in some Third World countries in the 1960s and 70s as a result of the transfer of high-yielding varieties (HYVs) of seeds and a new culture of agricultural practice resulting in high productivity of the land. It is found that most of the examined models of technological change do not completely account for this process. It is argued that technological change should be conceptualized as a process of knowledge change. Artifactual change, which the examined models accentuate, should be viewed as the manifestation of the knowledge change at a secondary level. With the Green Revolution as the empirical basis, arguments are presented for a comprehensive model of technological change within the framework of "technology as knowledge."
Concretizing Sustainable Worlds: Environmentalism as a Politics of Technological Transformation
Veak, Tyler J. (Virginia Tech, 2003-08-20)
Andrew Feenberg, a philosopher of technology, argues for a democratic rationalization of technology, whereby subjugated actors intervene in the design process to achieve their interests. He claims that environmentalism represents one of the greatest opportunities for this kind of intervention. His suggestion seems viable; most if not all of the current environmental problems stem from maladaptive technologies. Transforming these technologies is therefore imperative if we are to move toward more sustainable societies. Feenberg, however, does not address the details of his proposal or offer more than a few brief examples of what he is advocating. I use Feenberg's Critical Theory of technology to analyze and assess various environmentalisms. Along the way I expose the deficiencies of his theory and attempt build on his work. One problem, however, is that environmentalism is by no means a homogonous entity; rather, it is composed of numerous strands with their own unique histories, aims, and strategies. I argue that of the various environmentalisms grassroots environmental justice resonates most with Feenberg's theory. To illustrate, I present a case study of the toxics movement that emerged out of the Love Canal incident. I conclude by showing how grassroots environmental justice could enhance their effectiveness by employing the suggested Critical Theory of technology.
Creating Green Chemistry: Discursive Strategies of a Scientific Movement
Roberts, Jody Alan (Virginia Tech, 2005-12-13)
In this dissertation, I examine the evolution of the green chemistry movement from its inception in the early 1990s to the present day. I focus my study on the discursive strategies employed by leaders of the movement to establish green chemistry and to develop and institute changes in the practice of the chemical sciences. The study looks specifically at three different strategies. The first is the construction of a historical narrative. This history comes from the intersection of the chemical sciences with environmentalism in the United States retold to place chemistry in a central position for understanding global environmental health issues and green chemistry as the natural response to these problems. The second involves the attempts made to develop a concrete definition for green chemistry as well as a set of guiding principles for the practice of this alternative form of chemistry. The establishment of the definition and the principles, I argue, constitutes an important move in constituting the field as a very specific interdisciplinary group with a forged identity and the beginnings of a system for determining what properly "counts" as green chemistry. The third comes from the intersection of this history within the defining principles of the movement intersect to create a specific set of green chemistry practices, and how these practices manifest themselves in conference and pedagogical settings. Finally, I offer an overview of where the movement currently stands, offering a critical perspective on the future potential of the field. I argue that recent episodes indicate that the movement has not succeeded in accomplishing what it set out to do, and will continue to encounter problems unless a refashioning of the movement takes place. To offer perspective on green chemistry as a movement, I examine it through the lens of other (e.g., Frickel and Gross 2005) attempts to explore scientific movements as a special class of social movements.
A Cultural Study of a Science Classroom and Graphing Calculator-based Technology
Casey, Dennis Alan (Virginia Tech, 2001-11-12)
Social, political, and technological events of the past two decades have had considerable bearing on science education. While sociological studies of scientists at work have seriously questioned traditional histories of science, national and state educational systemic reform initiatives have been enacted, stressing standards and accountability. Recently, powerful instructional technologies have become part of the landscape of the classroom. One example, graphing calculator-based technology, has found its way from commercial and domestic applications into the pedagogy of science and math education. The purpose of this study was to investigate the culture of an "alternative" science classroom and how it functions with graphing calculator-based technology. Using ethnographic methods, a case study of one secondary, team-taught, Environmental/Physical Science (EPS) classroom was conducted. Nearly half of the 23 students were identified as students with special education needs. Over a four-month period, field data was gathered from written observations, videotaped interactions, audio taped interviews, and document analyses to determine how technology was used and what meaning it had for the participants. Analysis indicated that the technology helped to keep students from getting frustrated with handling data and graphs. In a relatively short period of time, students were able to gather data, produce graphs, and to use inscriptions in meaningful classroom discussions. In addition, teachers used the technology as a means to involve and motivate students to want to learn science. By employing pedagogical skills and by utilizing a technology that might not otherwise be readily available to these students, an environment of appreciation, trust, and respect was fostered. Further, the use of technology by these teachers served to expand students' social capital--the benefits that come from an individual's social contacts, social skills, and social resources.
The Diffusion of Climate Protection Planning among U.S. Municipalities
Pitt, Damian Rogero (Virginia Tech, 2009-06-10)
Many U.S. municipalities are engaged in climate protection planning, or efforts to reduce their communities' greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through land use, transportation, and energy planning. However, they face a number of procedural and institutional obstacles that limit the adoption and implementation of those plans. The literature on climate protection planning identifies some of the factors that lead municipalities to join relevant policy networks, but provides little guidance for overcoming the aforementioned obstacles and adopting policies to reduce community-wide GHG emissions. This dissertation increases the understanding of climate protection planning by examining whether the adoption of these plans and policies is driven primarily by local demographic, economic, environmental, or political characteristics. It also contributes to the literature on local government policy diffusion by examining whether the spread of climate protection policies is dictated primarily by internal or external determinants. The research for this report includes a survey with responses from 255 U.S. municipal leaders. These responses are combined with secondary data and analyzed using multiple regression techniques to estimate the impact of 15 demographic, political-institutional, economic, and environmental variables on the adoption of climate protection plans and policies. A series of follow-up telephone interviews provides a more detailed understanding of how these factors influence the extent of climate protection planning. The quantitative findings indicate that the influence of neighboring jurisdictions, the presence of staff members assigned to energy or climate planning, and the level of community environmental activism have the greatest impact on climate protection policy adoption. The interviews reveal that the most successful municipalities tend to coordinate with their neighbors on energy and climate issues and incorporate meaningful community participation in their climate protection planning processes. This supports the conclusion that the extent of climate protection planning is driven primarily by internal processes, and municipalities that are successful in this area do not fit any one profile according to their demographic, economic, or environmental characteristics. Therefore, most if not all municipalities have the potential to adopt climate protection policies if sufficient resources, support, and initiative are in place.
Don't Take My Kodachrome Away! Eastman Kodak and the Loss of System Control in the Digital Era
Kestel, Joseph James (Virginia Tech, 2004-04-14)
Photography is inherently technological, based as it is on intricate chemical processes. George Eastman famously created the conventional photographic system, making the technology widely available to a mass market. Using the systems approach, I show how the Eastman Kodak Company consolidated critical photographic technologies through acquisition and research in the beginning of the twentieth century. Once the company achieved predominance in the industry, it set about expanding its markets. However, as the non-chemical elements of the technology advanced in the 1970s and beyond, the market changed. At the same time, foreign competitors matched and even surpassed Kodak's production efficiencies, threatening the company as never before. Just as Kodak began facing serious price competition in the 1980s for the first time in decades, electronics manufacturers introduced video camcorders and, later, digital still cameras. Dismissed by Kodak managers as inferior, the radical technology advanced far more rapidly than Kodak's chemical research. Computers in particular guided consumers to embrace new values, emphasizing a means of imaging that the conventional system could not match. Eastman Kodak's success with the older system created a protective mindset that led its managers to focus very narrowly on the survival of film. They viewed the new competitive landscape skeptically, and as a result they stifled innovation and prevented the company from aggressively competing in emerging technologies.
"Every Thing in its Place" Gender and Space on America's Railroads, 1830-1899
McCall, R. David (Virginia Tech, 1999-09-16)
Gender was a critically important component of the rules and practices of railroading in the nineteenth century. While railroad passengers were initially composed of a homogenous group of middle-class men and women, increased use of trains very quickly led to separations by sex and class. Victorian understandings of respectability and gender roles and view of the world as being ordered and hierarchical strongly shaped how railroads treated their passengers. Like home and hotel parlors, railroad passenger cars constituted an intersection of the sacred private realm of the home and the less pure mundane arena of public life. Nineteenth-century middle-class Americans used space to define and maintain societal distinctions of gender and, especially, class. The definition and decoration of space in rail passenger service reinforced Victorian values and restricted and controlled behavior. Diverse gender and status roles distinguished white middle-class men and women from immigrants and members of other races as railroad passengers. Even white middle-class men and women did not have the same experience or expectations of nineteenth-century rail passenger service. Railroads in the nineteenth century were constructed by a mannered and hierarchical society, but they were also part of a capitalist consumer economy. In a conflict between taking care of business and upholding societal standards such as gender ideals, business generally took precedence.
Federal and state renewable energy policy: lessons from the late 1970's and early 1980's
Friedman, Howard Lawrence (Virginia Tech, 1993-01-05)
Based on federal and state experience of the late 1970's and early 1980's, this paper examines various policy alternatives that government could implement in promoting renewable energy. The paper assumes that government has an interest in promoting renewables. Therefore, it makes no attempt to advocate why federal or state governments should promote renewable energy. It merely presents a variety of options that these governments might choose to promote renewables as a viable alternative to meet present and future energy demands. The Carter and Reagan administrations at the federal level and the Brown, Deukmejian, and Wilson governorships in California are examined. This time period was selected because of the significant changes which occurred during the 1970's and 1980's in the energy economy and political arena and their resulting impact on the renewable energy industry. The contrast between one decade and the next starkly revealed the effects that government policy had in both cultivating and undermining a relatively infant industry. The thesis presents a detailed case study of Luz International to illustrate those effects. The discussion focuses on the factors affecting the policy formulation process, with emphasis on the importance of the executive office, interest groups, and the legislature. This thesis argues that energy policy formulation is governed or shaped largely by factors that are beyond the control of the renewable energy industry. Examples of such factors are benefit coalitions, short-term mentality of elected officials, and lack of public awareness. Effective policy to facilitate the commercialization of renewable energy technologies must account for the conditions of the marketplace and the political process.
Federal giants and wind energy entrepreneurs: utility-scale windpower in America 1970-1990
Serchuk, Adam (Virginia Tech, 1995-01-27)
In 1994, the use of wind turbines for electricity generation verges on economic respectability. Two contradictory trends have prepared a fertile niche for utility-scale windpower. The introduction of "deregulatory," competitive principles onto the electric industry fostered a non-utility generating sector relying on unconventional technologies. Simultaneously, policy-makers using "hyper-regulatory" tactics to pursue social goals such as reduced pollution pushed utilities to include renewable energy in their resource· plans. Both tendencies advanced windpower. By comparing the Federal Wind Energy Program (FWEP) to California's entrepreneurial windpower industry, this dissertation argues that windpower constituted a conservative addition to the American electric utility system, rather than a radical challenge to it. True, venture capitalists producing and delivering windpower to the nation's transmission grid challenged the utilities' financial control. But participants in the windpower story have constructed a version of windpower largely compatible with the electric system. The most notable products of the FWEP--multi-megawatt wind generators--proved too complex, too expensive and too unreliable for their environment. Windpower entrepreneurs, by contrast, devised smaller machines better suited to the market. Equally important, regulatory support shielded the windfarms from the political and economic turnabouts that scuttled the ambitious FWEP, which relied completely on ephemeral Federal patronage. Today's wind entrepreneurs present their technology as a cost-effective addition to the conventional generating system, rather than as a social tool dependent on government support for environmentalism. But the story of windpower does not constitute a self-contained drama. In addition to pitched negotiations over wind energy, the story implicates the changing utility industry, shifts in global energy politics, and emergent environmentalism. The windfarms' "success" and the FWEP's "failure" frequently depended on actors' ability to exploit or insulate themselves from events unrelated to windpower itself. Thus, the dissertation binds firstperson accounts from participants in the windpower story to strands of larger histories, recounted through periodical and secondary literature. The dissertation speaks to historians, sociologists, energy managers, policy-makers and members of the community of "science and technology studies." Ultimately, it aims to produce a tool for the actors and policymakers it describes.
Formation of the Cloud: History, Metaphor, and Materiality
Croker, Trevor D. (Virginia Tech, 2020-01-14)
In this dissertation, I look at the history of cloud computing to demonstrate the entanglement of history, metaphor, and materiality. In telling this story, I argue that metaphors play a powerful role in how we imagine, construct, and maintain our technological futures. The cloud, as a metaphor in computing, works to simplify complexities in distributed networking infrastructures. The language and imagery of the cloud has been used as a tool that helps cloud providers shift public focus away from potentially important regulatory, environmental, and social questions while constructing a new computing marketplace. To address these topics, I contextualize the history of the cloud by looking back at the stories of utility computing (1960s-70s) and ubiquitous computing (1980s-1990s). These visions provide an alternative narrative about the design and regulation of new technological systems. Drawing upon these older metaphors of computing, I describe the early history of the cloud (1990-2008) in order to explore how this new vision of computing was imagined. I suggest that the metaphor of the cloud was not a historical inevitability. Rather, I argue that the social-construction of metaphors in computing can play a significant role in how the public thinks about, develops, and uses new technologies. In this research, I explore how the metaphor of the cloud underplays the impact of emerging large-scale computing infrastructures while at the same time slowly transforming traditional ownership-models in digital communications. Throughout the dissertation, I focus on the role of materiality in shaping digital technologies. I look at how the development of the cloud is tied to the establishment of cloud data centers and the deployment of global submarine data cables. Furthermore, I look at the materiality of the cloud by examining its impact on a local community (Los Angeles, CA). Throughout this research, I argue that the metaphor of the cloud often hides deeper socio-technical complexities. Both the materials and metaphor of the cloud work to make the system invisible. By looking at the material impact of the cloud, I demonstrate how these larger economic, social, and political realities are entangled in the story and metaphor of the cloud.
From 'Hicks' to High Tech: Performative Use in the American Corn Belt
Brinkman, Joshua (Virginia Tech, 2017-01-27)
This study traces the history of how farmers have used technologies from the eighteenth century to the present to form identities, not simply as ways of making greater economic profits. Using technologies becomes a way to 'perform' a person's sense of him or herself. This insight serves historians because it suggests that users, not just important inventors, drive technological change. My study also suggests that the relationship people have with technology (and how they use it to form their identities) has historical genealogies. Engineers and business people will also find my history useful because the notion of 'performative use' means that people's views of themselves can influence the way they adopt and employ technologies. Policy scholars will gain from my study because I show that the way people use technology to understand themselves has consequences in determining how they participate in controversies over science and technology policy. This narrative begins in the eighteenth century by analyzing how elites like Benjamin Rush viewed the agricultural practices of German farmers, regarded by many in the upper classes as backwards. I show how observances of German farmers by elites created a pattern repeated throughout American history where rural people would use technology to perform their identities for an outside observer. In addition, I describe an identity, which I call 'German agrarianism,' and contend that this rural self-image migrated to the Midwest when German farmers moved westward. German agrarianism had several important features including the association of morality with family-based production practices, an obsession with owning personal property, the inclusion of women in farming and land ownership, and the practice of performing identity through the use of material objects. Next, I describe a rural identity with English origins, one that other scholars have named 'Jeffersonian agrarianism.' This Jeffersonian identity saw farmers as heroes who conquered the frontier, preserved American democracy, and supported less moral urban dwellers. I argue that Jeffersonian agrarianism in the nineteenth century began to reject technological and social change and that this view of rural people as anti-modern has influenced the way observers of rural life have viewed farmers up to the present. This study then analyzes the rural-urban conflict of the 1920s, contending that farmers used technologies to develop their own rural modern identity, which I call 'rural capitalistic modernity.' Farmers used technology this way to combat a version of modernity, which I name 'urban industrialism.' This modern identity, arising from the cities, advocated improving rural life by making farms resemble urban factories. This factory model threatened German and Jeffersonian rural identities that existed prior to the 1920s because it removed the family as the center of production and advocated work processes that took control and property ownership away from farmers. In addition, urban industrialism saw farmers as backward and in need of reform, which offended farmers who saw themselves in heroic terms as a result of Jeffersonian agrarianism. I argue that many rural people in the 1920s used technology to perform an identity of rural capitalistic modernity as a means of combating these urban efforts to restructure farms as factories and stereotype farmers as 'yokels' or 'rubes.' This rural modern identity became reinforced during the Cold War because the farmer saw Soviet collectivized agriculture as posing the same threats as previous urban industrialism. In addition, the way farmers used technology to reinforce their views of themselves as modern became valuable to government actors in the United States who saw increased agricultural production as a weapon in defeating the Soviet Union. By the 1970s, farmers formed an identity called 'rural ultramodernity' in which they began to think of themselves as more modern than urban dwellers because of their design and use of advanced technologies and their role as producers in the global food network. This ultramodern identity incorporates aspects of previous rural identities, including an obsession with combating urban stereotypes of farmers as 'hicks.' In addition, this rural ultramodern identity views farmers as having an inborn modernity inherited from previous generations of farmers. I argue that this ultramodern way farmers think of themselves explains why rural people in the Midwest have embraced the erection of wind turbines, unlike residents of other regions in the U.S. From a policy perspective, this study also contends that debates over science and technology, such as efforts to render agriculture more sustainable and organic, are impacted by unexpressed fundamental views about nature and morality. Statements about these controversies often take the form of proxy arguments that sound 'rational' but mask these unstated ideas, and they often alienate those with opposing views. Current debates over genetically modified organisms, from a rural perspective, are actually unspoken clashes over rural ultramodern and organic identities hidden by 'objective' points made by both sides involving science or economics. This study also challenges the common notion that technology and production are male domains by showing how both men and women have used technology to construct their identities as producers on Midwest farms. This insight illustrates how disagreements over gender roles underlie current policy debates about agriculture. Farmers view organic discourse as threatening rural women's identities as modern producers by framing farming as an immoral, industrial, and male domination of a moral and female nature. Rural people view organic discourse as carrying on the tradition of urban industrialism, which saw farmers as backwards and farm women as unhappy and occupying an exclusively domestic sphere. This study suggests that any effort to reform agriculture must include farmers and incorporate the way rural people use technologies to form and reinforce their identities. At the same time, the conclusion advocates for a new rural identity that avoids farmer's tendencies to view all technologies as 'progress' regardless of their environmental or social impacts.
A Guideline for Establishing Local Energy-Efficiency Programs in Virginia
St.Jean, David Bryan (Virginia Tech, 2010-12-15)
From a big picture perspective, investing in energy efficiency in the existing stock of residential buildings in the United States brings unquestioned economic, employment and environmental benefits. The aggregation of energy and dollar savings from millions of small improvements in efficiency adds up to enormous regional and national savings. By employing cost-effective investments in building efficiency, we could reduce the cumulative energy use of America's housing stock by twenty-eight percent, save Americans $41 billion annually, abate 360 megatons of CO-2 (Choi Granade, et.al., 2009), and meet fifty percent or more of the expected electric load growth by 2025 (EPA, 2008). In Virginia alone investing in the efficiency of our existing stock of buildings could save the commonwealth's residents $2.2 billion annually by 2025 (ACEEE, 2008). But from the perspective of the individual property owner the potential benefits of investing in energy efficiency, although just as real, are either less obvious or have impediments to their attainment. Understanding and overcoming these micro-impediments to energy investing is essential to realizing the macro-benefits of energy efficiency. Consequently, any successful local energy program must tailor its efforts to address the barriers to investing in efficiency at the level of the individual consumer. This thesis, through an analysis of existing and emerging residential energy programs, along with a review of the behavioral and economic literature on the subject, aims to point out the micro-impediments to achieving macro-reductions in energy use. Becoming familiar with these obstructions on the level of the individual consumer is the first necessary step in producing model guidelines for a successful whole house local energy efficiency program. Although the basic tenets of these guidelines could be used as the basis for any locally organized energy program in the U.S., they are specifically tailored in this thesis for the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Hacking Systems, Hacking Values: Interactive Theories For An Interactive World
Kelly, Liam Patrick (Virginia Tech, 2003-12-12)
Langdon Winner's article "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" (1986) has become a classic piece within Science and Technology Studies. While Winner was certainly not the first to consider the inherently political qualities of technology, his article has assumed the role of a touchstone for both supporters and critics of the idea that artifacts embody political and social relationships. In the chapters that follow, I shall try to answer Winner and his critics, by studying a particular technology that I believe to be capable of shedding some much-needed light on the issue. My aim is provide a restatement of Winner's question in the pages that follow, with the hope of getting past such problematic terms as "embodiment" and "encapsulation." My hope is to make the issue itself clearer, so that we can get to the heart of how technology, values, and human beings systematically interact. I shall utilize in my discussion computer network scanning software. I shall first discuss the background to the question "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" and then describe some of the ethical and political forces alive in the computer security world. Next I shall closely examine two particular pieces of network scanning software and describe their interactions in terms of political and ethical motivations. Finally, I shall use this case study as a basis for a broader discussion of how values may be better conceived in terms of complex interactive systems of human beings and technologies.
Igniting The Light Elements: The Los Alamos Thermonuclear Weapon Project, 1942-1952
Fitzpatrick, Anne (Virginia Tech, 1998-06-23)
The American system of nuclear weapons research and development was conceived and developed not as a result of technological determinism, but by a number of individual architects who promoted the growth of this large technologically-based complex. While some of the technological artifacts of this system, such as the fission weapons used in World War II, have been the subject of many historical studies, their technical successors -- fusion (or hydrogen) devices -- are representative of the largely unstudied highly secret realms of nuclear weapons science and engineering. In the postwar period a small number of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory's staff and affiliates were responsible for theoretical work on fusion weapons, yet the program was subject to both the provisions and constraints of the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, of which Los Alamos was a part. The Commission leadership's struggle to establish a mission for its network of laboratories, least of all to keep them operating, affected Los Alamos's leaders' decisions as to the course of weapons design and development projects. Adapting Thomas P. Hughes's "large technological systems" thesis, I focus on the technical, social, political, and human problems that nuclear weapons scientists faced while pursuing the thermonuclear project, demonstrating why the early American thermonuclear bomb project was an immensely complicated scientific and technological undertaking. I concentrate mainly on Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory's Theoretical, or T, Division, and its members' attempts to complete an accurate mathematical treatment of the "Super" -- the most difficult problem in physics in the postwar period -- and other fusion weapon theories. Although tackling a theoretical problem, theoreticians had to address technical and engineering issues as well. I demonstrate the relative value and importance of H-bomb research over time in the postwar era to scientific, politician, and military participants in this project. I analyze how and when participants in the H-bomb project recognized both blatant and subtle problems facing the project, how scientists solved them, and the relationship this process had to official nuclear weapons policies. Consequently, I show how the practice of nuclear weapons science in the postwar period became an extremely complex, technologically-based endeavor.

Browsing by Author "Hirsh, Richard F."

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