Development Of Effective Technologies Research Articles

Graphic design in America: a visual language history

Graphic design has had a profound impact upon American life in the 19th and 20th centuries. Essays by specialists in the field examine areas that include graphic design's role as a social force as well as the effect of technological developments and political change.

Management consultants and technology

The paper reviews the emergence of management consultancy and its role in introducing new technology to industry. The increasing importance of computers is examined, particularly in the areas of advanced manufacturing technology (AMT), computer-aided design and manufacture (CADCAM) and information technology (IT). The effect of technological developments in management consultancy is analysed. The Institute of Management Consultants (IMC) is described. In conclusion, a consideration of future trends in management consultancy is presented.

Household Technology and the Social Construction of Housework

Historians and social scientists generally agree that the forces of industrialization and the growth of the market economy have progressively absorbed much of the household's economic function. Furthermore, popular belief assumes that the vestiges of old forms of production in the home will surely be eliminated by the application of technological rationality. Put another way, it is thought by the public and many academics that technology, broadly defined, has freed women for other, nonhousework tasks-in particular, employment in the paid labor market. These assumptions are reflected in popular terminology such as fast foods (to save time), convenience foods (to increase ease of preparation), and laborsaving devices (conducive to easing the work load generally). This imagery has such power that much traditional research takes these effects for granted instead of demonstrating or disproving them empirically. Yet even with the unprecedented growth of the market sector and the almost universal availability of certain items of household equipment and goods, recent studies show that labor in the home still accounts for approximately half of this country's total work time.1 In this article our goal is to investigate the evidence concerning the effects of technological developments on household work. We believe that popular beliefs about the positive effects are inadequately sub-

Trends in banking

The article focuses on those topics which concern the relationship between hardware suppliers and banks. The trend toward automation, the centralization and rationalization of the banking function are discussed. The effect of technological developments upon the organizational structure of banks and the need for standardized systems are two areas, in particular, which are highlighted.

Assessing the Consequences of Technological Development

Assessing the Consequences of Technological Development

The Sun of the World and the Fate of Man on Earth: On the 500th Anniversary of Copernicus's Birth

Virtually all of us were raised in the traditions of the nineteenth century, in which the destinies of the natural science and the humanities were separated from each other. We are the wards of the last century in another sense as well, since we recall attempts to establish separate principles of methodology for each of these two realms of human knowledge. We live in the twentieth century, in which the conflict between the natural sciences and the humanities, expressed chiefly in the opposition between culture and technology, seemed to many people insurmountable and still looks that way to them. The danger of destruction of the principal values of our culture created by the threat of war and extermination, a danger that appeared as the consequence of technological development not controlled by society, impels us to the thought that an ever more dramatic conflict must arise between natural science and the humanities.

The Production of Human Capital and the Life Cycle of Earnings

T HE application of capital theory to decisions on individual improvement, and in particular improvement of earning capacity, has provided a framework for the understanding of many aspects of observed behavior regarding education, health, occupational choice, mobility, etc., as rational investment of present resources for the purpose of enjoying future returns. The formulation by Friedman and Kuznets (1945) and the significant development of the theory by Becker (1962, 1964) and Mincer (1958, 1962) provided a novel view of the life cycle of earnings by linking it to the time profile of investment in human capital: People make most of their investments in themselves when they are young, and to a large extent by foregoing current earnings. Observed earnings are therefore relatively low at early years, and they rise as investment declines and as returns on past investments are realized. The main reason why investment is undertaken mostly by the young is that they have a longer period over which they can re-