Helga Nowotny's Books

An Orderly Mess

By: Helga Nowotny

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This book was triggered by the recent geopolitical shifts and the turn towards an allegedly post-factual era. An Orderly Mess is a timely diagnosis of the current dissolution of the modern order, while highlighting the opportunities of messiness. The essay focuses on the temporal and spatial dimensions in which messiness becomes apparent today: broken time lines and fragmented spaces. Messiness is framed by a blurring of the world orderings inherited from modernity. Against the backdrop of rapid digitalization, we may find ourselves again in a phase of transition toward new ways of world ordering. The focus on messiness reveals the different patterns of order and disorder that underpin the current process of transition. In the second half of the volume the author revisits her 1989 book on Eigenzeit, which explored how moderns experience time, or are exposed to it. A quarter century later she finds that the new inventions of technology have challenged the traditional meaning of time (and also of space) even more, increasing the non-simultaneity of human existence. Today, small devices channel into one?s fingertips medial eigenzeit: the time that one has to oneself in order to spend it with those who are absent. The past has shrunk and the present extends to the future: ?there is no pre?determined future, only a future that is as radically open as it is inherently uncertain?. ÿ

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104

Publisher

Central European University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

9633862310

ISBN 13

9789633862315

The New Production of Knowledge

The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies

By: Michael Gibbons,Camille Limoges,Helga Nowotny,Simon Schwartzman,Peter Scott,Martin Trow

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The New Production of Knowledge

The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies

By: Michael Gibbons,Camille Limoges,Helga Nowotny,Simon Schwartzman,Peter Scott,Martin Trow

In this provocative and broad-ranging work, the authors argue that the ways in which knowledge - scientific, social and cultural - is produced are undergoing fundamental changes at the end of the twentieth century. They claim that these changes mark a distinct shift into a new mode of knowledge production which is replacing or reforming established institutions, disciplines, practices and policies. Identifying features of the new mode of knowledge production - reflexivity, transdisciplinarity, heterogeneity - the authors show how these features connect with the changing role of knowledge in social relations. While the knowledge produced by research and development in science and technology is accorded central concern, the authors also outline the changing dimensions of social scientific and humanities knowledge and the relations between the production of knowledge and its dissemination through education.

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Page Count

191

Publisher

SAGE

Published Date

ISBN 10

1446265870

ISBN 13

9781446265871

Time

The Modern and Postmodern Experience

By: Helga Nowotny

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Time

The Modern and Postmodern Experience

By: Helga Nowotny

Helga Nowotny's exploration of the forms and meaning of time in contemporary life is panoramic without in any way partaking of the blandness of a survey. From the artificial time of the scientific laboratory to the distinctively modern yearning for one’s own time, she regards every topic in this wide-ranging book from a fresh angle of vision, one which reveals unsuspected affinities between the bravest, newest worlds of global technology and the most ancient worlds of myth." --Lorraine Daston, University of Chicago This book represents a major contribution to the understanding of time, giving particular attention to time in relation to modernity. The development of industrialism, the author points out, was based upon a linear and abstract conception of time. Today we see that form of production, and the social institutions associated with it, supplanted by flexible specialization and just-in-time production systems. New information and communication technologies have made a fundamental impact here. But what does all this mean for temporal regimes? How can we understand the transformation of time and space involved in the bewildering variety of options on offer in a postmodern world? The author provides an incisive analysis of the temporal implications of modern communication. She considers the implications of worldwide simultaneous experience, made possible by satellite technologies, and considers the reorganization of time involved in the continuous technological innovation that marks our era. In this puzzling universe of action, how does one achieve a 'time of one's own'? The discovery of a specific time perspective centred in the individual, she shows, expresses a yearning for forms of experience that are subversive of established institutional patterns. This brilliant study, became a classic in Germany, will be of interest to students and professionals working in the areas of social theory, sociology, politics and anthropology.

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188

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons

Published Date

ISBN 10

0745692680

ISBN 13

9780745692685

The Cunning of Uncertainty

By: Helga Nowotny

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The Cunning of Uncertainty

By: Helga Nowotny

Uncertainty is interwoven into human existence. It is a powerful incentive in the search for knowledge and an inherent component of scientific research. We have developed many ways of coping with uncertainty. We make promises, manage risks and make predictions to try to clear the mists and predict ahead. But the future is inherently uncertain - and the mist that shrouds our path an inherent part of our journey. The burning question is whether our societies can face up to uncertainty, learn to embrace it and whether we can open up to a constantly evolving future. In this new book, Helga Nowotny shows how research can thrive at the cusp of uncertainty. Science, she argues, can eventually transform uncertainty into certainty, but into certainty which remains always provisional. Uncertainty is never completely static. It is constantly evolving. It encompasses geological time scales and, at the level of human experience, split-second changes as cells divide. Life and death decisions are taken in the blink of the eye, while human interactions with the natural environment may reveal their impact over millennia. Uncertainty is cunning. It appears at unexpected moments, it shuns the straight line, takes the oblique route and sometimes the unexpected short-cut. As we acknowledge the cunning of uncertainty, its threats retreat. We accept that any scientific inquiry must produce results that are provisional and uncertain. This message is vital for politicians and policy-makers: do not be tempted by small, short-term, controllable gains to the exclusion of uncertain, high-gain opportunities. Wide-ranging in its use of examples and enriched by the author’s experience as President of the European Research Council, one of the world’s leading funding organisations for fundamental research. The Cunning of Uncertainty is a must-read for students and scholars of all disciplines, politicians, policy-makers and anyone concerned with the fundamental role of knowledge and science in our societies today.

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161

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons

Published Date

ISBN 10

0745687652

ISBN 13

9780745687650

Naked Genes

Reinventing the Human in the Molecular Age

By: Helga Nowotny,Giuseppe Testa

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Naked Genes

Reinventing the Human in the Molecular Age

By: Helga Nowotny,Giuseppe Testa

The interaction between new forms of biological life and new forms of social life in modern democracies. The molecular life sciences are making visible what was once invisible. Yet the more we learn about our own biology, the less we are able to fit this knowledge into an integrated whole. Life is divided into new sub-units and reassembled into new forms: from genes to clones, from embryonic stages to the building-blocks of synthetic biology. Extracted from their scientific and social contexts, these new entities become not only visible but indeed “naked”: ready to assume an essential status of their own and take on multiple values and meanings as they pass from labs to courts, from patent offices to parliaments and back. In Naked Genes, leading science scholar Helga Nowotny and molecular biologist Giuseppe Testa examine the interaction between these dramatic advances in the life sciences and equally dramatic political reconfigurations of our societies. Considering topics ranging from assisted reproduction and personalized medicine to genetic sports doping, they reveal both surprising continuities and radical discontinuities between the latest advances in the life sciences and long-standing human traditions.

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155

Publisher

MIT Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0262294990

ISBN 13

9780262294997

The New Production of Knowledge

The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies

By: Michael Gibbons,Camille Limoges,Helga Nowotny,Simon Schwartzman,Peter Scott,Martin Trow

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The New Production of Knowledge

The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies

By: Michael Gibbons,Camille Limoges,Helga Nowotny,Simon Schwartzman,Peter Scott,Martin Trow

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196

Publisher

SAGE

Published Date

ISBN 10

144622872X

ISBN 13

9781446228722

Re-Thinking Science

Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty

By: Helga Nowotny,Peter B. Scott,Michael T. Gibbons

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Re-Thinking Science

Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty

By: Helga Nowotny,Peter B. Scott,Michael T. Gibbons

Re-Thinking Science presents an account of the dynamic relationship between society and science. Despite the mounting evidence of a much closer, interactive relationship between society and science, current debate still seems to turn on the need to maintain a 'line' to demarcate them. The view persists that there is a one-way communication flow from science to society - with scant attention given to the ways in which society communicates with science. The authors argue that changes in society now make such communications both more likely and more numerous, and that this is transforming science not only in its research practices and the institutions that support it but also deep in its epistemological core. To explain these changes, Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons have developed an open, dynamic framework for re-thinking science. The authors conclude that the line which formerly demarcated society from science is regularly transgressed and that the resulting closer interaction of science and society signals the emergence of a new kind of science: contextualized or context-sensitive science. The co-evolution between society and science requires a more or less complete re-thinking of the basis on which a new social contract between science and society might be constructed. In their discussion the authors present some of the elements that would comprise this new social contract.

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Page Count

426

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons

Published Date

ISBN 10

0745657079

ISBN 13

9780745657073

In AI We Trust

Power, Illusion and Control of Predictive Algorithms

By: Helga Nowotny

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In AI We Trust

Power, Illusion and Control of Predictive Algorithms

By: Helga Nowotny

One of the most persistent concerns about the future is whether it will be dominated by the predictive algorithms of AI – and, if so, what this will mean for our behaviour, for our institutions and for what it means to be human. AI changes our experience of time and the future and challenges our identities, yet we are blinded by its efficiency and fail to understand how it affects us. At the heart of our trust in AI lies a paradox: we leverage AI to increase our control over the future and uncertainty, while at the same time the performativity of AI, the power it has to make us act in the ways it predicts, reduces our agency over the future. This happens when we forget that that we humans have created the digital technologies to which we attribute agency. These developments also challenge the narrative of progress, which played such a central role in modernity and is based on the hubris of total control. We are now moving into an era where this control is limited as AI monitors our actions, posing the threat of surveillance, but also offering the opportunity to reappropriate control and transform it into care. As we try to adjust to a world in which algorithms, robots and avatars play an ever-increasing role, we need to understand better the limitations of AI and how their predictions affect our agency, while at the same time having the courage to embrace the uncertainty of the future.

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125

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons

Published Date

ISBN 10

1509548823

ISBN 13

9781509548828

The Public Nature of Science under Assault

Politics, Markets, Science and the Law

By: Helga Nowotny,Dominique Pestre,Eberhard Schmidt-Aßmann,Helmuth Schulze-Fielitz,Hans-Heinrich Trute

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The Public Nature of Science under Assault

Politics, Markets, Science and the Law

By: Helga Nowotny,Dominique Pestre,Eberhard Schmidt-Aßmann,Helmuth Schulze-Fielitz,Hans-Heinrich Trute

Science has development from a self-evident public good to being highly valued in other contexts for different reasons: strengthening the economic competitiveness and, especially in high-tech fields, as a financial investment for future gains. This has been accompanied by a shift from public to private funding with intellectual property rights gaining importance. But in contemporary democracies citizens have also begun to voice their concerns about science and technology related risks, demanding greater participation in decision-making and in the setting of research priorities. The book examines the legal issues and responses vis-à-vis these transformations of the nature of public science. It discusses their normative content as well as the inherent limitations of the law in meeting these challenges.

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151

Publisher

Springer Science & Business Media

Published Date

ISBN 10

3540288864

ISBN 13

9783540288862

Time

The Modern and Postmodern Experience

By: Helga Nowotny

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Time

The Modern and Postmodern Experience

By: Helga Nowotny

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138

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John Wiley & Sons

Published Date

ISBN 10

0745694233

ISBN 13

9780745694238

Uchronia

Designing Time

By: Helga Schmid

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Uchronia

Designing Time

By: Helga Schmid

What time is it? Why should we care? This book critically investigates our contemporary time crisis. The transformation of society from an agrarian to an industrial, and finally an urbanized way of living and working has created a fundamental change in our understanding of time: a 24/7 mentality. The move from natural time to the digital age leads to a fragmentation of time that deeply affects our daily biological and social rhythm. We need a new approach to time to overcome our temporal system of clocks and calendars. This book investigates a new perception of time by exploring the concept of uchronia, a term derived from the Greek u-topos and meaning ‘no time’ or ‘non-time’. Uchronia is a way of questioning, speculating on and designing new kinds of temporal systems that are more about being in tune than on time.

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Page Count

256

Publisher

Birkhäuser

Published Date

ISBN 10

3035618119

ISBN 13

9783035618112

Insatiable Curiosity

Innovation in a Fragile Future

By: Helga Nowotny

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Insatiable Curiosity

Innovation in a Fragile Future

By: Helga Nowotny

An influential scholar in science studies argues that innovation tames the insatiable and limitless curiosity driving science, and that society's acute ambivalence about this is an inevitable legacy of modernity. Curiosity is the main driving force behind scientific activity. Scientific curiosity, insatiable in its explorations, does not know what it will find, or where it will lead. Science needs autonomy to cultivate this kind of untrammeled curiosity; innovation, however, responds to the needs and desires of society. Innovation, argues influential European science studies scholar Helga Nowotny, tames the passion of science, harnessing it to produce “deliverables.” Science brings uncertainties; innovation successfully copes with them. Society calls for both the passion for knowledge and its taming. This ambivalence, Nowotny contends, is an inevitable result of modernity. In Insatiable Curiosity, Nowotny explores the strands of the often unexpected intertwining of science and technology and society. Uncertainty arises, she writes, from an oversupply of knowledge. The quest for innovation is society's response to the uncertainties that come with scientific and technological achievement. Our dilemma is how to balance the immense but unpredictable potential of science and technology with our acknowledgement that not everything that can be done should be done. We can escape the old polarities of utopias and dystopias, writes Nowotny, by accepting our ambivalence—as a legacy of modernism and a positive cultural resource.

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Page Count

195

Publisher

MIT Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0262263963

ISBN 13

9780262263962

In AI We Trust

Power, Illusion and Control of Predictive Algorithms

By: Helga Nowotny

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In AI We Trust

Power, Illusion and Control of Predictive Algorithms

By: Helga Nowotny

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125

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John Wiley & Sons

Published Date

ISBN 10

1509548823

ISBN 13

9781509548828

The Cunning of Uncertainty

By: Helga Nowotny

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The Cunning of Uncertainty

By: Helga Nowotny

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161

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John Wiley & Sons

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ISBN 10

0745687652

ISBN 13

9780745687650

The Public Nature of Science under Assault

Politics, Markets, Science and the Law

By: Helga Nowotny,Dominique Pestre,Eberhard Schmidt-Aßmann,Helmuth Schulze-Fielitz,Hans-Heinrich Trute

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The Public Nature of Science under Assault

Politics, Markets, Science and the Law

By: Helga Nowotny,Dominique Pestre,Eberhard Schmidt-Aßmann,Helmuth Schulze-Fielitz,Hans-Heinrich Trute

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151

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Springer Science & Business Media

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ISBN 10

3540288864

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9783540288862

Innovation in the Anthropological Perspective

Insights and Consequences for the Theory, Practice, and Design of Innovating

By: Julia C. Gluesing,Christine Miller,Helga Wild

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Innovation in the Anthropological Perspective

Insights and Consequences for the Theory, Practice, and Design of Innovating

By: Julia C. Gluesing,Christine Miller,Helga Wild

Innovation is a constant in human life and organization, arising from within a context-based culture of social structures and beliefs. This book re-examines the processes, practices, and mechanisms of innovation from an anthropological perspective, offering a theory of innovation as a dynamic multidimensional system. It uses methods and stories across a broad arc of time, place, social and cultural context, and subject matter. The chapters explore the intersection of virtual, local, and global dynamics and deepen our understanding of aspects and dimensions of innovation that challenge common perceptions, particularly in business and organizational environments. The approach aims to situate innovation in an integrated view of human and non-human ecologies, and to create common ground for a new form of research and practice.

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