Kevin Kelly's Complexity Theory: The Politics and Ideology of Self-organising Systems

Regarded as a contemporary prophet of the new technology and economy, widely acclaimed author and editor of Wired , Kevin Kelly argues that the realms of nature and human construction are becoming one. Human-made things are becoming more lifelike and life is becoming more engineered. Utilising complexity theory and other concepts fashioned on the paradigmatic logic of biological systems, Kelly envisions a future with radically different forms of social and organisational control. In this future world, control is dispersed in highly pluralistic, open, and decentralised systems. Natural, technological, economic and social elements of the system co-evolve towards a superior, neo-biological civilisation that (among other things) will foster bottom-up control, co-ordinated change and co-operation among all elements. We contest Kelly's metaphysic of the new economy and new technology, arguing that he illicitly collapses technology and the economy into nature, using nature metaphors to legitimate the new forms of economy and organisation. We argue that Kelly fails to factor in the logic of capital into his scenario and does not explore the consequences of the new organisation of economy and new technology for the environment and society.     

Buffalo commons: A range of possibilities

Ernest Callenbach: Bring Back the Buffalo! Covelo: Island Press, 1996.

Richard Manning: Grassland. New York: Viking, 1995.

Anne Matthews: Where the Buffalo Roam. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991.     

The five‐factor model and safety in the workplace: Investigating the relationships between personality and accident involvement

Two hundred and two undergraduate participants (134 female, 68 male) completed both the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO‐PI‐R) and self‐report measures of prior workplace accident involvement. Significant inverse relationships were found between the factor of Agreeableness and the total reported number of work‐related accidents and between the factor of Conscientiousness and the total reported number of not‐at‐fault work‐related accidents alone, as well as the total reported number of work‐related accidents. Further, regression analyses indicate that both Agreeableness and Conscientiousness factors may be useful for predicting certain types of workplace accidents. Implications and potential future directions for research are discussed.     

NASA Technology Utilization Program: A concept paper on options

The NASA Technology Transfer Program has taken on a variety of roles during the past twenty years. This paper briefly reviews these roles. It presents then several organized approaches that could be adopted to maximize the cost/benefit of technology transfer from NASA to the private sector.