Bulletin of Science,Technology & Society

STS represents a significant reform effort in science/technology education in grades kindergarten through the undergraduate collegiate years. It focuses on use of constructivism as a way of learning and a broader view of science, and as a way of assessing learning for real understanding. Basic to STS is teaching and the assessment of learning in multiple domains, namely, concepts, processes, the application of both to new situations, the nature and history of science, creativity skills, and attitude. When education occurs in STS classrooms, students grow significantly in all domains and more so than in traditional classrooms.

Fundamental science is rapidly approaching its asymptote because it has been so successful. We already have a “theory of everything, that matters to the human race.” The laws of chemistry and physics cannot be replaced. Although most scientists react to this as though it were religious blasphemy, the proof is in our record. Since the discovery of quantum mechanics, no fundamental science of any significance to other sciences has appeared—in 70 years and with, perhaps, expenditures of$ 0.5 trillion. In contrast, engineering and applied sciences have taken over the fundamental role, insofar as it is their advances from electric lights to cars, to planes, to computers that affect all science and all citizens. The reductionist model of approaching reality has been discredited. The most visible arena for the victory of the new integrationist approaches is in the reemergence of integrative medicine, which includes high-tech medicine in the larger body-mind-spirit, or whole person approach.

Deep ecology's biocentric philosophy rejects the anthropocentrism of mainstream environmentalism. Biocentrism holds that all life has inherent value and, as such, is worthy of respect and protection. Deep ecology's action strategy emerges from disgust with the compromises made by mainstream environmentalism. Deep ecologists tend toward confrontational actions such as blockades, “tree sits,” and “ecotage” (“monkey wrenching” or covert direct action). Earth First! in the United States, and Rainforest Action Network at the international level, are two well-known deep ecology groups. Bound together in a complex relationship, deep ecology is both dependent on and antagonistic toward the life sciences. As yet, there is no explicit, deep ecological statement for scientific reform. But there have been scientific developments cheering to deep ecologists, including the development and growth of the new field of conservation biology. This article begins to outline the reforms necessary to bring establishment science closer to radical ecological principles.

Insight into the relation between technology and society can be obtained by imagining that the world is organized differently and then determining how technology would be different. This approach is illustrated by discussion of three alternative worlds: one in which defense is carried out by nonviolent methods, one in which there is no intellectual property, and one in which workers control decisions about their work.

How do people adapt to technology? This study examines one mechanism people may be using to personalize technology—talking to machines. Communicating to machines is similar to other forms of personalization and can be explained using attribution theory. Characteristics of machines (such as relationship to emotions, predictability, and familiarity) may affect people's willingness to communicate. A survey study that examined people's communication to machines showed that people do communicate to some machines, and hypotheses about the characteristics of machines were supported. A second survey study examined the differences between communicating with cars and computers, comparing issues such as frequency, emotionality, and the perceived gender of the machines. Overall, these studies show some of the ways people are adapting to their increasingly computerized, technological environment.

Since the introduction of the concept of “sustainable development” by the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987, a number of programs and policies have been offered, enacted, and pursued that profess to those ideals. The extent to which they actually accord with them, however, is the subject of a growing body of debate and literature. Some critics have argued that despite its promise, the concept of sustainable development has merely been reformulated and used to continue promoting the goal of economic growth as the primary measure of progress. This viewpoint argues that sustainable development can never be more than sustainable economic growth under the current growth development paradigm. This article examines these arguments through an analysis of sustainable development as pursued in the United States. It focuses on the sustainable development component of the U.S. government's comprehensive approach to solving urban problems through the creation of empowerment zones.

In this article, the authors explore the interaction of language and culture through a metaphorical analysis of the ideas written of in Gregory Stock's book, Metaman, as well as explain how education shares the implicit assumptions of Metaman, thus perpetuating and strengthening a modern-day discourse that embeds a technological manifest destiny enveloped in deficiency as a guiding metaphor.

The conference where this article was originally presented solicited recommendations for the “right questions” to ask regarding education and technology. The author of this article suggests that we already know what the right questions are for illuminating technology and its social meaning. What the author wants to know is why those questions in fact are not being asked more widely—why is widespread disinclination to enter explicit deliberation on the proper place of technology so resilient? Langdon Winner uses the term “technological somnambulism” to describe the predominant stance toward technology in our culture, that “we so willingly sleepwalk through the process of reconstituting the conditions of human existence” via the adoption of new technologies. The basic institutional and ideological forces shaping the development and use of technology are not mysterious. But, scrutiny of those forces remains limited to a relative handful of academics and activists. How can technological somnambulism be countered?

The infusion of the internet technologies into schools introduces a new instantiation of text into the everyday experiences of students, teachers, and administrators. Given the dialectic interaction between organizations, cognitions, and technologies, hypertext, primarily delivered through interaction with the World Wide Web, will likely have far reaching implications. The decentered, complex, and open nature of hypertext promotes multiculuralism and multivocality, questioning the efficacy of accountability-based learning, the authority of the textbook, a particular interpretation of texts, the curriculum, and the policy that heretofore validated the typical educational experience. This article argues that the result of this challenge will be movement in the direction of more localized and fluid solutions to problems confronting students and educators, and more reliance on expertise from nontraditional sources. Ultimately, the introduction of hypertext into the daily “vocabulary” of education will effect change in the domains of educational policy, organizational structures, and institutional authority.