Information Communication Technology and Social Transformation by Hugh F. Cline

Author:Hugh F. Cline [Cline, Hugh F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General, Technology & Engineering, Social Aspects, Future Studies
ISBN: 9781317703204
Google: mHLMAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-02-05T04:57:48+00:00

Big Science

The first pattern is the ongoing expansion of what is frequently called big science. The Manhattan Project was the first large scientific endeavor to earn that label. The project ran from 1942 to 1946 and produced the atomic bomb, credited with bringing World War II to a halt. A joint effort among scientists in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada, the project’s work was distributed over 30 sites. At its height, the Manhattan Project employed more than 130,000 persons, and in present-day dollars, it expended more than $22 billion. The label big science simultaneously refers to the enormous costs, the large staff, the expensive equipment, and the importance of the product or products. Examples of current-day big science projects include the Hubble Space Telescope, the Large Hadron Collider, the International Space Station, the Human Genome Project, monitoring and predicting earthquakes around the world, and the global tracking of changing weather patterns.

The number of big science projects has increased in the past 60 years and are no longer limited to the physical sciences. Projects involving large databases are now common in both the social sciences and the humanities. The decreasing costs of data storage and the proliferation of cloud computing encourage the creation of large databases that include repeated measurements of the same phenomena or processes over time. Many of these large databases are designed to permit ongoing longitudinal studies of continuing phenomena for indefinite periods of time. A well-known, early longitudinal study tracked 825 men and women graduates of Harvard and Radcliff e Colleges for a total of 65 years and revealed interesting patterns of adult development, including measures of health and happiness. At the present time, hundreds of longitudinal studies are in various stages of development and implementation. In the humanities, many proposals and projects are underway to create huge digital databases of books, journals, papers, artworks, and more. Research projects in the humanities and the social sciences are also becoming big in terms of funds, staff, equipment, and the importance of results. A common theme in this chapter, and indeed throughout this book, is that such developments would not be feasible without ICTs.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.