49 resultados para historical source
Resumo:
This dissertation investigates the atomic power solution in Finland between 1955 - 1970. During these years a national arrangement for atomic energy technology evolved. The foundations of the Finnish atomic energy policy; the creation of basic legislation and the first governmental bodies, were laid between 1955 - 1965. In the late 1960's, the necessary technological and political decisions were made in order to purchase the first commercial nuclear reactor. A historical narration of this process is seen in the international context of "atoms for peace" policies and Cold War history in general. The geopolitical position of Finland made it necessary to become involved in the balanced participation in international scientific-technical exchange and assistive nuclear programs. The Paris Peace Treaty of 1947 categorically denied Finland acquisition of nuclear weapons. Accordingly, from the "Geneva year" of 1955, the emphasis was placed on peaceful purposes for atomic energy as well as on the education of national professionals in Finland. An initiative for the governmental atomic energy commission came from academia but the ultimate motive behind it was an anticipated structural change in the supply of national energy. Economically exploitable hydro power resources were expected to be built within ten years and atomic power was seen as a promising and complementing new energy technology. While importing fuels like coal was out of the question, because of scarce foreign currency, domestic uranium mineral deposits were considered as a potential source of nuclear fuel. Nevertheless, even then nuclear energy was regarded as just one of the possible future energy options. In the mid-1960 s a bandwagon effect of light water reactor orders was witnessed in the United States and soon elsewhere in the world. In Finland, two separate invitations for bids for nuclear reactors were initiated. This study explores at length both their preceding grounds and later phases. An explanation is given that the parallel, independent and nearly identical tenders reflected a post-war ideological rivalry between the state-owned utility Imatran Voima and private energy utilities. A private sector nuclear power association Voimayhdistys Ydin represented energy intensive paper and pulp industries and wanted to have free choice instead of being associated themselves with "the state monopoly" in energy pricing. As a background to this, a decisive change had started to happen within Finnish energy policy: private and municipal big thermal power plants became incorporated into the national hydro power production system. A characteristic phenomenon in the later history is the Soviet Union s effort to bid for the tender of Imatran Voima. A nuclear superpower was willing to take part in competition but not on a turnkey basis as Imatran Voima had presumed. As a result of many political turns and four years of negotiations the first Finnish commercial light water reactor was ordered from the East. Soon after this the private nuclear power group ordered its reactors from Sweden. This work interprets this as a reasonable geopolitical balance in choosing politically sensitive technology. Conceptually, social and political dimensions of new technology are emphasised. Negotiations on the Finnish atomic energy program are viewed as a cooperation and a struggle, where state-oriented and private-oriented regimes pose their own macro level views and goals (technopolitical imaginaries) and defend and advance their plans and practical modes of action (schemata). Here, not only technologists but even political actors are seen to contribute to technopolitical realisations.
Resumo:
This study is a pragmatic description of the evolution of the genre of English witchcraft pamphlets from the mid-sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth century. Witchcraft pamphlets were produced for a new kind of readership semi-literate, uneducated masses and the central hypothesis of this study is that publishing for the masses entailed rethinking the ways of writing and printing texts. Analysis of the use of typographical variation and illustrations indicates how printers and publishers catered to the tastes and expectations of this new audience. Analysis of the language of witchcraft pamphlets shows how pamphlet writers took into account the new readership by transforming formal written source materials trial proceedings into more immediate ways of writing. The material for this study comes from the Corpus of Early Modern English Witchcraft Pamphlets, which has been compiled by the author. The multidisciplinary analysis incorporates both visual and linguistic aspects of the texts, with methodologies and theoretical insights adopted eclectically from historical pragmatics, genre studies, book history, corpus linguistics, systemic functional linguistics and cognitive psychology. The findings are anchored in the socio-historical context of early modern publishing, reading, literacy and witchcraft beliefs. The study shows not only how consideration of a new audience by both authors and printers influenced the development of a genre, but also the value of combining visual and linguistic features in pragmatic analyses of texts.
Resumo:
The open development model of software production has been characterized as the future model of knowledge production and distributed work. Open development model refers to publicly available source code ensured by an open source license, and the extensive and varied distributed participation of volunteers enabled by the Internet. Contemporary spokesmen of open source communities and academics view open source development as a new form of volunteer work activity characterized by hacker ethic and bazaar governance . The development of the Linux operating system is perhaps the best know example of such an open source project. It started as an effort by a user-developer and grew quickly into a large project with hundreds of user-developer as contributors. However, in hybrids , in which firms participate in open source projects oriented towards end-users, it seems that most users do not write code. The OpenOffice.org project, initiated by Sun Microsystems, in this study represents such a project. In addition, the Finnish public sector ICT decision-making concerning open source use is studied. The purpose is to explore the assumptions, theories and myths related to the open development model by analysing the discursive construction of the OpenOffice.org community: its developers, users and management. The qualitative study aims at shedding light on the dynamics and challenges of community construction and maintenance, and related power relations in hybrid open source, by asking two main research questions: How is the structure and membership constellation of the community, specifically the relation between developers and users linguistically constructed in hybrid open development? What characterizes Internet-mediated virtual communities and how can they be defined? How do they differ from hierarchical forms of knowledge production on one hand and from traditional volunteer communities on the other? The study utilizes sociological, psychological and anthropological concepts of community for understanding the connection between the real and the imaginary in so-called virtual open source communities. Intermediary methodological and analytical concepts are borrowed from discourse and rhetorical theories. A discursive-rhetorical approach is offered as a methodological toolkit for studying texts and writing in Internet communities. The empirical chapters approach the problem of community and its membership from four complementary points of views. The data comprises mailing list discussion, personal interviews, web page writings, email exchanges, field notes and other historical documents. The four viewpoints are: 1) the community as conceived by volunteers 2) the individual contributor s attachment to the project 3) public sector organizations as users of open source 4) the community as articulated by the community manager. I arrive at four conclusions concerning my empirical studies (1-4) and two general conclusions (5-6). 1) Sun Microsystems and OpenOffice.org Groupware volunteers failed in developing necessary and sufficient open code and open dialogue to ensure collaboration thus splitting the Groupware community into volunteers we and the firm them . 2) Instead of separating intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, I find that volunteers unique patterns of motivations are tied to changing objects and personal histories prior and during participation in the OpenOffice.org Lingucomponent project. Rather than seeing volunteers as a unified community, they can be better understood as independent entrepreneurs in search of a collaborative community . The boundaries between work and hobby are blurred and shifting, thus questioning the usefulness of the concept of volunteer . 3) The public sector ICT discourse portrays a dilemma and tension between the freedom to choose, use and develop one s desktop in the spirit of open source on one hand and the striving for better desktop control and maintenance by IT staff and user advocates, on the other. The link between the global OpenOffice.org community and the local end-user practices are weak and mediated by the problematic IT staff-(end)user relationship. 4) Authoring community can be seen as a new hybrid open source community-type of managerial practice. The ambiguous concept of community is a powerful strategic tool for orienting towards multiple real and imaginary audiences as evidenced in the global membership rhetoric. 5) The changing and contradictory discourses of this study show a change in the conceptual system and developer-user relationship of the open development model. This change is characterized as a movement from hacker ethic and bazaar governance to more professionally and strategically regulated community. 6) Community is simultaneously real and imagined, and can be characterized as a runaway community . Discursive-action can be seen as a specific type of online open source engagement. Hierarchies and structures are created through discursive acts. Key words: Open Source Software, open development model, community, motivation, discourse, rhetoric, developer, user, end-user