They developed a form of writing based on cuneiform (i.e. wedge-shaped) symbols. Their symbols were written on wet clay tablets which were baked in the hot sun and many thousands of these tablets have survived to be read by us today. It was the use of a stylus on a clay medium that led to the use of cuneiform symbols since curved lines could not be drawn.
Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT and the founder (2001) and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, a center of research and reflection on the evolving connections between people and artifacts in the co-construction of identity http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/techself. The Initiative looks at a range of technologies including robotics, psychopharmacology, video games, and simulation software and their effects on human development. Dr. Turkle has written numerous articles on psychoanalysis and culture and on the "subjective side" of people's relationships with technology, especially computers. She received a joint doctorate in sociology and personality psychology from Harvard University, and is a licensed clinical psychologist. She is the author of Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud's French Revolution (Basic Books, 1978; MIT Press paper, 1981; second revised edition, Guilford Press, 1992);The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (Simon and Schuster, 1984; Touchstone paper, 1985; second revised edition, MIT Press, forthcoming); and Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (Simon and Schuster, November 1995; Touchstone paperback, 1997).
Timothy Lenoir is professor of history and chair of the Program in History and Philosophy of Science. Lenoir is the author of The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German Biology, Dordrecht and Boston: D. Reidel, 1982; paperback edition by the University of Chicago Press, 1989, which examines the development of non-Darwinian theories of evolution, particularly in the German context during the nineteenth century. His other books include: Politik im Tempel der Wissenschaft: Forschung und Machtausübung im deutschen Kaiserreich, Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag, 1992; Instituting Science: The Cultural Production of Scientific Disciplines, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997, a volume which examines the formation of disciplines and the role of public institutions in the construction of scientific knowledge; an edited volume, Inscribing Science: Scientific Texts and the Materiality of Communication, appeared in spring 1998 from Stanford Press.
Professor Hirsh's research focuses on the
Deregulation and Restructuring of the American Electric Utility System.
He is the director of Virginia Tech's Consortium on Energy Restructuring.
Below are links to Professor Hirsh's publications and courses.
The main events of the history of the psychology
are represented in a timeline that extends since the
year 600 before our era until the present time.
To make it faster for you, we have divided the
timeline in three parts:
Year 600 before our era to 1899
1900 to 1949
1950 up to our days
Current Research
The Structures of Computation: Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, 1950-70 traces the efforts to develop a mathematical model of computation that adequately represents the possibilities and limits of the digital electronic stored-program computer. Beginning with the initial models, the Turing machine and the switching circuit, the book recounts the origins of formal language theory, computational complexity, and formal semantics. It looks beyond the conceptual history to examine the formation of theoretical computer science both as a recognized discipline in its own right and as a field of mathematics. The book thereby constitutes a dual case study of the historical problems of mathematization and of the formation of new scientific disciplines. Some of the themes are explored in my recent articles on history of computing.
Professor Riskin received her B.A. from Harvard University and her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, and taught at Iowa State University and at MIT before coming to Stanford. Her research interests include Enlightenment science, politics and culture, and the history of scientific explanation. She is the author of Science in the Age of Sensibility: The Sentimental Empiricists of the French Enlightenment (University of Chicago Press, 2002), and is currently writing a book on the history of artificial life since the seventeenth century, as inseparably connected with the history of notions of consciousness and selfhood. The book's working title is The Android's I: A Joint History of Consciousness and Artificial Life. She recently did a radio interview about this work-in-progress, which you can hear at http://www.wbez.org/audio_library/od_radec03.asp#02. In October 2003, she hosted a Workshop on the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life at Stanford: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPST/ALworkshop/.
Media Interface Design- Powerpoint Presentation
Sharon is interested in the dynamics of environmental and technological controversies and has special interest in the social aspects of engineering, environmental politics, the rhetoric of sustainable development, the philosophies behind environmental economics, and trends in environmentalism and corporate activism/public relations. Most recently she has broadened her research interests to include the promotion of the work ethic, market solutions to social problems anda critique of neoliberalism.
John Henry trained as a historian of science at Leeds and the Open Universities, and was a research fellow at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London before moving to Edinburgh University in 1986. He is interested in the interactions of and relations between science, philosophy, medicine, magic and religion in the Renaissance and early modern periods. He has recently published The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science (Macmillian Press and St Martin's Press, 1997
