Author: Matthew Dean Hindman File Type: pdf Advocates representing historically disadvantaged groups have long understood the need for strong public relations, effective fundraising, and robust channels of communication with the communities that they serve. Yet the neoliberal era and its infusion of money into the political arena have deepened these imperatives, thus adding new financial hurdles to the long list of obstacles facing minority communities. To respond to these challenges, a professionalized, nonprofit model of political advocacy has steadily gained traction. In many cases, advocacy organizations sought to harness and redirect the radical verve that characterized the protest movements of the 1960s into pragmatic, state-sanctioned approaches to political engagement. In Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens, Matthew Dean Hindman looks at how and why contemporary political advocacy groups have transformed social movements and their participants. Looking to LGBT political movements as an exemplary case study, Hindman explores the advocacy explosion in the United States and its impact on how advocates encourage citizens to understand their role in the political process. He argues that current advocacy groups encourage members of the LGBT community to view themselves as stakeholders in a common struggle for political incorporation. In doing so, however, they often overshadow more imaginative and transformational approaches that could unsettle and challenge straight society and its prevailing political and sexual norms. Advocacy groups carved out a space within a neoliberalizing political process that enabled them to instruct their members, followers, and constituents on serving effectively as industrious political claimants. Political Advocacy and Its Interested Citizens thus sheds light on grassroots politics as it is practiced in present-day America and offers a compelling and original analysis of the ways in which neoliberalism challenges citizens to participate as consumers and investors in the advocacy marketplace. **

Author: Michael Hiltzik File Type: pdf In the bestselling tradition of The Soul of a New Machine, Dealers of Lightning is a fascinating journey of intellectual creation. In the 1970s and 80s, Xerox Corporation brought together a brain-trust of engineering geniuses, a group of computer eccentrics dubbed PARC. This brilliant group created several monumental innovations that triggered a technological revolution, including the first personal computer, the laser printer, and the graphical interface (one of the main precursors of the Internet), only to see these breakthroughs rejected by the corporation. Yet, instead of giving up, these determined inventors turned their ideas into empires that radically altered contemporary life and changed the world.Based on extensive interviews with the scientists, engineers, administrators, and executives who lived the story, this riveting chronicle details PARCs humble beginnings through its triumph as a hothouse for ideas, and shows why Xerox was never able to grasp, and ultimately exploit, the cutting-edge innovations PARC delivered. Dealers of Lightning offers an unprecedented look at the ideas, the inventions, and the individuals that propelled Xerox PARC to the frontier of technohistoiy--and the corporate machinations that almost prevented it from achieving greatness.Amazon.com ReviewThroughout the 70s and 80s, Xerox Corporation provided unlimited funding to a renegade think tank called the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Occupying a ramshackle building adjacent to Stanford University, PARCs occupants would prove to be the greatest gathering of computer talent ever assembled it conceptualized the very notion of the desktop computer, long before IBM launched its PC, and it laid the foundation for Microsoft Windows with a prototype graphical user interface of icons and layered screens. Even the technology that makes it possible for these words to appear on the screen can trace its roots to Xeroxs eccentric band of innovators. But despite PARCs many industry-altering breakthroughs, Xerox failed ever to grasp the financial potential of such achievements. And while Xeroxs inability to capitalize upon some of the worlds most important technological advancements makes for an interesting enough story, Los Angeles Times correspondent Michael Hiltzik focuses instead on the inventions and the inventors themselves. We meet fiery ringleader Bob Taylor, a preachers son from Texas known as much for his ego as for his uncanny leadership we trace the term personal computer back to Alan Kay, a visionary who dreamed of a machine small enough to tuck under the arm and we learn how PARCs farsighted principles led to collaborative brilliance. Hiltziks consummate account of this burgeoning era wont improve Xeroxs stake in the computer industry by much, but it should at least give credit where credit is due. Recommended. --Rob McDonaldFrom Publishers WeeklyAnyone who uses a personal computer is familiar with technologies pioneered by Xeroxs Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), which started operation in 1970. The received wisdom is that Xerox muffed the chance to dominate the personal computer era by allowing revolutionary technologies developed at PARC to be snatched up by strangers and rivals (most famously, Apple, which took the mouse and the graphical user interface from PARC). L.A. Times reporter Hiltzik argues that the received wisdom is wrong. He expertly situates the story of which products actually made it to market for Xerox (e.g., the laser printer) and which technologies Xerox leaked away (WYSIWYG word processing, hypertext, Ethernet and TCPIP, to name a few) in a broader analysis of the role of basic science research in business. He praises Xerox execs for understanding the difference between basic research and product development and for exempting PARC from the stultifying effect of having to do the latter. Among the many facts of life on the cutting edge that Hiltzik makes abundantly clear is that very bad decisions are often made for very good business reasons. While granting that Xerox could certainly have better exploited the new technologies issuing from PARC, he emphasizes that the company brought together a group of superlatively creative minds at the very moment when they could exert maximal influence on a burgeoning technology, and financed their work with unexampled generosity. This is a top-notch business page-turner. Unburdened by any gee-whiz jaw-dropping, yet fully appreciative of the power of creative minds, it is informed by a sure understanding of the complex relationship between business and technology. Major adpromo. 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Author: Robert C. Elliott File Type: pdf Upon its original publication in 1970, Robert C. Elliotts The Shape of Utopia influenced both some of the major scholars of an emerging utopian and science fiction studies, including Darko Suvin, Louis Marin and Fredric Jameson, and authors of new utopian fiction ranging from Ursula K. Le Guin to Kim Stanley Robinson. The book establishes a deep genetic link between utopia and satire, and offers scintillating readings of classic works by Thomas More, Jonathan Swift, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Aldous Huxley and others. It charts the rise of an insidious fear of utopia that comes to characterize the first half of the twentieth century and investigates some of the aesthetic problems raised by the efforts to portray a utopian society, before concluding with brilliant speculations on the emerging practice of anti-anti-utopia - the reinvention of utopia for contemporary times. This Ralahine Classics edition also includes a new introduction by Phillip E. Wegner which situates the book in its context and argues for its continued significance today a 1971 review of the book by the late author of utopian science fiction, Joanna Russ and an opening tribute by one of Elliotts former students, Kim Stanley Robinson.**

Author: Nancy Calvert-Koyzis File Type: pdf Until recently, the voices of women who interpreted the Bible prior to the feminism of the late twentieth century had been largely forgotten. However, the current recovery of these womens interpretive works reveals writings that seem strangely familiar in their anticipation of later feminist approaches to the biblical text and their thematic interest in liberation. In this volume, the contributions of seventeenth- to nineteenth-century women including Arcangela Tarabotti, Aemelia Lanyer, and Josephine Butler are addressed in their historical and cultural contexts. Each of these recovered authors worked to liberate women from interpretations of the Bible that proved oppressive to them. Leading feminist biblical scholars assess the works of these forerunners, or protofeminists, in light of contemporary feminist approaches, and the collection as a whole illustrates the significance of these neglected works for reception history, biblical studies, and women s studies. The contributors include Nancy Calvert-Koyzis and Heather E. Weir, Amanda W. Benckhuysen, Robert Knetsch, J. Cheryl Exum, Marion Ann Taylor, Joy A. Schroeder, Esther Fuchs, Christiana de Groot, Caroline Blyth, Philippa Carter, Beth Bidlack, Pamela J. Walker, Sandra Hack Polaski, J. Ramsey Michaels, Ben Witherington III, Hilary Elder, Agnes Choi, Barry Huff, and Pauline Nigh Hogan.**