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The history of technology is often troubled by good ideas that do not, for one reason or another, take off right away-sometimes for millennia. Sometimes, technology comes to a standstill, and sometimes, it even reverses itself. Thus, unlike science, which seems to proceed at a reasonable and calm rate, the progress of technology is diffi cult to theorize about. While in science many developments are predictable to a certain extent and this predictability may, at times, direct or stymie science's progress-as with stem-cell research and cloning-technological advances, such as the Internet, are often sudden and unpredictable, and therefore frightening. In Theory of Technology, David Clarke brings together ten authors who try to understand technology from a variety of viewpoints.

In Ruined (2009), Lynn Nottage invites audiences to reorder African diasporic kinships by attending the journeys of Mama Nadi, Salima, and Sophie in the Central African forest zone. She deploys a dramaturgy imbricated in “diaspora’s very form itself, the transgressive and often unexpected loops of circulation that cannot easily be traced to fi xed points of origin” (Pinto 3-4). Nottage charts diffi cult diasporic choices for the African women who must heal to survive, and who cannot return to territorial or lineal authenticities for safety in belonging. By establishing a house of ruined kinships and ruined bodies amidst ruined lands, Nottage disorders originary claims of belonging to Africa and African diasporas. Who belongs to where? Where belongs to whom? Roots do not hold answers for the women in this play. While national and local militias battle to rule female-bodied reproductive capacities, dispossessing those who do not belong in their imagined futures, corporate and foreign miners strip natural resources.

Adolescence is a period of enormous change. The transformations that occur during adolescence emanate both from within the developing child (i.e., physiological and biological development), and in the social worlds in which adolescents interact (i.e., their schools, families, and social networks). Although the changes that occur during adolescence are often portrayed by the media as being troublesome and diffi cult, research actually indicates that unpleasant experiences are not inevitable outcomes during adolescence (Eccles, Midgley, et al., 1993; R. Epstein, 2007; Midgley, 1993; Simmons & Blyth, 1987). One of the most prominent experiences during early adolescence is the transition from elementary to middle school. Whereas this transition is not universal, it is quite common across a variety of cultures, and it often coincides with the simultaneous pubertal changes occurring during that time.

Game theory can be defi ned as ‘the study of mathematical models of confl ict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers’ (Myerson, 1991). It can also be called ‘confl ict analysis’ or ‘interactive decision theory’, which can more accurately express the essence of the theory. Still, game theory is the most popular and accepted name. In PPPs, confl icts and strategic interactions between promoters and governments are very common and play a crucial role in the performance of PPP projects. Many diffi cult issues such as opportunisms, negotiations, competitive biddings, and partnerships have been challenging the wisdom of the PPP participants. Therefore, game theory is very appealing as an analytical framework to study the interaction and dynamics between the PPP participants and to suggest proper strategies for both governments and promoters.

As the chapters in this book demonstrate, qualitative research has for some time now been a valuable addition to the fi eld of communication disorders, yet, as a discipline, it is given less scientifi c status than quantitative or experimental research. Indeed, it is oft en diffi cult to obtain external funding for clinical research projects that propose qualitative methods. As Packer (2011) has pointed out, it is the randomized blind trial that has set the gold standard for health and medical research. Studies that use experimental paradigms are typically preferred in the more prestigious journals within the fi eld of communication disorders, and given that obtaining external grants and publishing in highly ranked journals are requirements for faculty seeking tenure, it is not surprising that pursuing qualitative research may seem a less appealing career choice for new researchers.

Educational leaders are faced with diffi cult and exciting challenges every day. Th ey are responsible for the eff ective functioning of an institution or division and are accountable to a variety of stakeholders with diff erent interests and priorities, including staff , students, parents, community, and government. Th ey must constantly ask themselves what they ultimately hope to achieve and, relatedly, what values they hope to promote and serve.

As Donna Haraway (1991) noted almost thirty years ago, biotechnologies, virtual realties, prosthetics, pharmacology, robotics, and genetic manipulation all create a situation in which distinguishing the “ontologically” human from the inhuman or nonhuman is diffi cult if not impossible. Working from this axiom, N. Katherine Hayles (1999) argues that we have already become posthuman. It is not a question of consciousness or recognition or even of a task. The present moment is posthuman (without becoming “transhuman”). A posthumanist viewpoint, however, is diff erent (Wolfe 2010). It is about how one relates to that present and to the enormous, almost crushing weight of several millennia of humanist thought. Although posthumanists vary enormously in the specifi cs of their engagements (and we believe we are nowhere near discovering all the permutations), they share in turning toward the legacies of humanism and using posthumanist reconceptualizations of human/animal/machine/thing relations to diagnose how humanism ignores, obscures, and disavows the real relations among beings and things that make up the stuff of the world.

It’s challenging to be an analog adult in the digital world young children are growing up in today. Making effective, appropriate, and intentional choices about the use of technology tools and digital media with young children can be diffi cult, even overwhelming, for early childhood educators and parents who live in a world full of TVs, computers, tablets, smartphones, handheld digital games, and other mobile devices. In such a screen-saturated world, we need to ask ourselves how best to manage the quality and quantity of technology and media use in children’s lives-both how much children watch and what they watch and do when they are using screens.

William Morris is a diffi cult man to categorise. He was a leading member of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, 1 a designer, craftsman, printer, historian, poet, writer, translator of Icelandic sagas, political activist, industrialist, environmentalist and newspaper editor. He was infl uential in establishing a number of institutions such as the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and the Commons Preservation Society that were forerunners of the Council for the Protection of Rural England, Open Spaces Society and the National Trust (Wilmer, 1993 ). He was involved in the turbulent arena of Victorian socialist politics and the various schisms that emerged, yet, throughout his political activism, nature remained as important to him as social and economic issues.

The question that the teacher asked the student, “You wouldn’t do that at home, would you?” takes as granted the universality of the rules, which, we pretend, either make sense or are natural, or both, and so, like sunlight, are always and everywhere the same. Rules are justi ed as rational-it is demonstrated that failure to comply leads to catastrophe (if everybody talked at the same time, no one would be able to understand them)—or as no more than simple codi cations of human behavior, the wayeveryone has always acted (a man never wears a hat inside a building). That the very necessity of saying the rule denies the foundations on which these justi cations are erected is ignored or denied: but how else to expect obedience without coercion? Or else there is recourse to coercion (if you’re not going to do what I say, you can just go up to your room), the issue of justi cation is never broached, and rules are emitted as edicts ex cathedra, often precisely because they make no sense (I know you don’t like what they gave you, but you have to thank them for it anyway) or because the natural way is condemned (I know it’s diffi cult, but you must control yourself). Nevertheless, whether rational, natural, or arbitrary, the expectation always is that they will provide guides for the conduct of actions everywhere (we expect you to be as well behaved at Greg’s house as you are at home).

If Mary Magdalene is, by defi nition and origin, a controversial and complex fi gure, comprehending her specifi c character from a medieval perspective constitutes a particularly diffi cult ambition for a scholar. First of all, one needs to circumscribe the “late-medieval” time period, which is in itself, elusive and methodologically fallible. Second, one needs to circumscribe the multiplicity of cultural, social, and religious patterns present in Europe at the time scholars assume is the end of the “Middle Ages,” but that others prefer to view as the beginning of a “modern” Renaissance culture.

Many environmentalists and policymakers stress the importance of not making people feel anxious when telling them about climate change. However, anthropogenic global warming is anxiety-provoking. Being able to bear anxiety is a vital part of being able to face reality, as we know that when anxiety becomes too much to bear, our thinking can become irrational and start to lack proportion. This chapter is on anxiety. I fi rst explore the subject of anxiety and then look at what might be our central anxieties about climate change. It is important that we identify these and also that we seek to know as much as we can about the effects of our anxieties about climate change on our capacity to think and act. I conclude by looking at some implications for policy about how to engage people about climate change.

Photo-realistic characters are perhaps the most diffi cult to create. Because we see people every day, photo-realistic CG characters are judged by the highest of standards. That means during the creation phase reference images and maquettes should be followed meticulously.

In 1889, Grace Fairchild departed her Wisconsin home to marry an older widower, and together they settled on a homestead in South Dakota. Grace willingly accompanied her husband, but the shock of living in a rural and isolated Plains state took its toll on her, and she remembered her new surroundings as a “desolate unknown.”1 Almost immediately, she went to work improving her homestead with furnishings, gardening, and making social connections with her neighbors. Eventually Grace also led the way in establishing a school for the local children, by fi rst contacting the county superintendent, then helping to purchase a cabin from a vacated homestead, and eventually hiring a seventeen-year-old girl as the teacher. Although the young woman had little training and experience, Grace admitted, “Th e children seemed to be learning. Just having a school available made life look a lot better to me.”2 Her reaction echoed the sentiments of many Western women who diligently sought educational opportunities for themselves and their children, especially as they attempted to bring their version of civilization to a diffi cult environment.

There are many ways to tackle the relationship between language and experience. One is to listen to people who have had experiences they feel escape their words and, often enough, escape words at all. There is of course an odd paradox about listening to people in order to understand experiences that seem to evade words. This essay is about this paradox. It is concerned with such elusive experiences and how people talk about them. It draws on accounts made by eyewitnesses of the events of September 11, 2001 in Manhattan. I should say right at the beginning that my work on these accounts has been more diffi cult than usual. The accounts were collected as part of a larger psychological study carried out by the New York-based “National 9/11 Memory Consortium.” I had been invited to study this collection of material but since the day I agreed I have felt ambivalent about the entire project; and what’s more, I also have felt ambivalent about my own role in “doing research” on the reactions, refl ections, and emotions of people who were immediately affected by the attacks on the World Trade Center. But let me start with how it all began.