Dwelling with computers, they become part of the informing environment, like weather, like street sounds. A house that is true to its house nature must have a certain quiet, even stolidness. Through a thousand subtle cues, computers will help turn our houses into homes. Weiser (1996) This paper is interested in explicating some of the multiple concerns involved in designing appropriate technolo...

Geomatics is a useful new term for the use of advanced information technologies for the recording, storage, manipulation and analysis of geographical imagery. It includes remote sensing, global positioning systems and computer-based image manipulation and analysis. While high technology geomatics has tended to concentrate analytical power, recently developed, affordable systems now permit land-...

Not too long ago, ten fingers and ten toes defined a successful birth. Not too far from now, ten fingers and ten toes will be just the beginning. Parents always hope for a healthy baby, and medical advances continue to help secure the fulfillment of this hope. But reprogenetics, a new combination of technology and science that allows us to choose the genes, and thus the traits, of the children ...

Biomonitoring is no more than a toolbox of techniques that we can use to keep a check on the integrity (or 'health') of aquatic ecosystems. Organisms that live their whole lives in water would not be present if conditions at any time during their lives had been too poor to sustain them. They can thus provide information on the environmental conditions that must have pertained in the river since...

This essay examines critically the demarcation of ethics and science. While its method is theoretical rather than experimental, it proposes a research program as a logical next step to test its conclusions. It offers a conceptual foundation for a new ethics whose chief aim is the survival of life. Only a global consensus can challenge contemporary threats to life. The foundation of this new eth...