W. Patrick Mccray's Books

Making Art Work

How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture

By: W. Patrick Mccray

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Making Art Work

How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture

By: W. Patrick Mccray

The creative collaborations of engineers, artists, scientists, and curators over the past fifty years. Artwork as opposed to experiment? Engineer versus artist? We often see two different cultural realms separated by impervious walls. But some fifty years ago, the borders between technology and art began to be breached. In this book, W. Patrick McCray shows how in this era, artists eagerly collaborated with engineers and scientists to explore new technologies and create visually and sonically compelling multimedia works. This art emerged from corporate laboratories, artists' studios, publishing houses, art galleries, and university campuses. Many of the biggest stars of the art world--Robert Rauschenberg, Yvonne Rainer, Andy Warhol, Carolee Schneemann, and John Cage--participated, but the technologists who contributed essential expertise and aesthetic input often went unrecognized.

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Page Count

383

Publisher

MIT Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0262359502

ISBN 13

9780262359504

The Visioneers

How a Group of Elite Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnologies, and a Limitless Future

By: W. Patrick McCray

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The Visioneers

How a Group of Elite Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnologies, and a Limitless Future

By: W. Patrick McCray

The story of the visionary scientists who invented the future In 1969, Princeton physicist Gerard O'Neill began looking outward to space colonies as the new frontier for humanity's expansion. A decade later, Eric Drexler, an MIT-trained engineer, turned his attention to the molecular world as the place where society's future needs could be met using self-replicating nanoscale machines. These modern utopians predicted that their technologies could transform society as humans mastered the ability to create new worlds, undertook atomic-scale engineering, and, if truly successful, overcame their own biological limits. The Visioneers tells the story of how these scientists and the communities they fostered imagined, designed, and popularized speculative technologies such as space colonies and nanotechnologies. Patrick McCray traces how these visioneers blended countercultural ideals with hard science, entrepreneurship, libertarianism, and unbridled optimism about the future. He shows how they built networks that communicated their ideas to writers, politicians, and corporate leaders. But the visioneers were not immune to failure—or to the lures of profit, celebrity, and hype. O'Neill and Drexler faced difficulty funding their work and overcoming colleagues' skepticism, and saw their ideas co-opted and transformed by Timothy Leary, the scriptwriters of Star Trek, and many others. Ultimately, both men struggled to overcome stigma and ostracism as they tried to unshackle their visioneering from pejorative labels like "fringe" and "pseudoscience.? The Visioneers provides a balanced look at the successes and pitfalls they encountered. The book exposes the dangers of promotion—oversimplification, misuse, and misunderstanding—that can plague exploratory science. But above all, it highlights the importance of radical new ideas that inspire us to support cutting-edge research into tomorrow's technologies.

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Page Count

366

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691176299

ISBN 13

9780691176291

Keep Watching the Skies!

The Story of Operation Moonwatch & the Dawn of the Spage Age

By: W. Patrick McCray

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Keep Watching the Skies!

The Story of Operation Moonwatch & the Dawn of the Spage Age

By: W. Patrick McCray

After the launch of Sputnik, thousands of ordinary Americans became "Moonwatchers," a network of citizen-scientists who helped professional astronomers by providing critical and otherwise unavailable information about the first satellites.

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Page Count

308

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691128545

ISBN 13

9780691128542

Giant Telescopes

Astronomical Ambition and the Promise of Technology

By: W. Patrick McCray

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Giant Telescopes

Astronomical Ambition and the Promise of Technology

By: W. Patrick McCray

Every night, astronomers use a new generation of giant telescopes at observatories around the world to study phenomena at the forefront of science. By focusing on the history of the Gemini ObservatoryÑtwin 8-meter telescopes located on mountain peaks in Hawaii and ChileÑGiant Telescopes tells the story behind the planning and construction of modern scientific tools, offering a detailed view of the technological and political transformation of astronomy in the postwar era. Drawing on interviews with participants and archival documents, W. Patrick McCray describes the ambitions and machinations of prominent astronomers, engineers, funding patrons, and politicians in their effort to construct a modern facility for cutting-edge scienceÑand to establish a model for international cooperation in the coming era of Òmegascience.Ó His account details the technological, institutional, cultural, and financial challenges that scientists faced while planning and building a new generation of giant telescopes. Besides exploring how and why scientists embraced the promise and potential of new technologies, he considers how these new tools affected what it means to be an astronomer. McCrayÕs book should interest anyone who desires a deeper understanding of the science, technology, and politics behind finding our place in the universe.

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Page Count

378

Publisher

Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674019962

ISBN 13

9780674019966

Book's by W. Patrick Mccray

Making Art Work

Making Art Work

The Visioneers

The Visioneers

Keep Watching the Skies!

Keep Watching the Skies!

Giant Telescopes

Giant Telescopes

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