Managing Knowledge
"All media are extensions of some human faculty -- psychic or physical. The wheel is an extension of the foot; the book is an extension of the eye; clothing, an extension of the skin; electric circuitry, an extension of the central nervous system. Media, by altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratios of sense perceptions. The extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act -- the way we perceive the world."
Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Massage (sic), (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967), p. 26.
What Can We Know?
Before going into how we manage knowledge, maybe we ought to take a look at ourselves. What makes us tick? You know, get out a species microscope and watch us strutting around, sleeping, eating, drinking, filing things and procreating. Well, sure. No subject too large. What are we? Why do we have so much trouble getting along? As genomic research increasingly reveals, we are separated from our fellow creatures by less than we once imagined, or might have wished for. Once we thought we were different from all those other creatures. There was a time not long ago when we imagined ourselves to be a maker and user of tools, and uniquely so. We thought this defined us. We were THE CREATOR of tools. This idea of ourselves, this notion of Man-the-Tool-User lasted for nearly a century, right up to the moment some one noticed a chimp breaking off a branch to retrieve ants from an ant-hill. Not that man isn't a tool-user and tool-maker of the first order. Think about some of our tools: clay tablets, printing presses, TVs, computers, hard drives, and atomic bombs of one kind or another. The list is staggering, but perhaps our tools are only by-products of somethi...
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...he U.S. who, like Dr. Richter, possess both the know-how to make a nuclear weapon and the "fudge-factor" -- the memory of last minute tweaking and intuitive short-cuts that made some of the nation's 1,000 or so nuclear weapons tests work.
"Nuclear-weapons design was then [when Dr. Richter was a young apprentice Ph.D. at Los Alamos] taught in a kind of medieval apprenticeship. Dr. Richter hung around one or two bomb designers to see how they did it. 'You worked for those guys until you didn't need them anymore,' he says. "The quicker you did that, the quicker you could do more things on your own." 4
What's needed in any organization is a way to capture the "fudge-factor"; to save and store what was said and done and acted upon outside of formal documents and procedures -- a way to manage not just explicit documents and events, but tacit events and actions as well.
"The successful explosion of a Teller-inspired thermonuclear device in 1952 gave" the U.S. the go ahead blow against the Soviet Union in the arms race of the fifties (Teller and Ulam). Scientists around the world had been thinking that a thermonuclear bomb, also know as the Hydrogen Bomb, could be developed, but they arms race was completely focused on the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer was a household name because he was the head scientist at Los Alamos while developing the atomic bomb, after that had been completed the tide shifted to a man who’s name is Edward Teller. Teller, who is a “Hungarian-born atomic physicist” and “know as the "father" of the hydrogen bomb”, was at the forefront when it came to the design of the Teller-Ulam Hydrogen Bomb (Hydrogen Bomb Exploded). Stanislaw Marcin Ulam, mathematician who developed idea of the lithium hydride bomb, was the other half that perfect combination. Although there was excitement for the U.S. being the first with the bomb some scientists did not share that excitement.
America’s development of this secret atomic bomb began back in 1939 when President Roosevelt was still alive. This project was so secretive that Roosevelt did not even want his Vice President Harry S. Truman to know a thing about it. Truman could not believe it, until he read the note from Secretary Stimson. That night he wrote a letter in his diary about the U.S. perfecting an explosive great enough to destroy the world. Tr...
In 1949, the U.S. was shocked when the U.S.S.R. was able to successfully reproduce a nuclear missile, when, the U.S. had been carefully guarding the plans for the missiles. The missiles continued to improve when, in January of 1950 a German theoretical physicist named Klaus...
Weinberg, A. M. 1994. The First Nuclear Era: The Life and Times of a Technological Fixer. New York: Springer.
This text provides a historical account of the development of the atomic bomb and nuclear fission. It provides insight into the function and effectiveness of the Manhattan Project, as well as the destruction of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This book illustrates human determination, the ability to perform during times of crisis, and again brings up the question of morality and human
Sullivan, Edward T. The Ultimate Weapon: The Race to Develop the Atomic Bomb. New York: Holiday House, 2007.
The past century has unveiled many new revels in science and technology. Nuclear technology is one of the more recent brinks of discovery. Over the past 60 years or so, scientists have been on a gold rush for the nuclear power. New elements were being discovered and the potentials of their peculiar characteristics drew in more and more people. Highly radioactive substances were being tested for their potencies at the subatomic level. The gain in this scurry for answers was partially politically charged, if not totally for educational purposes. The United States was amid the throng of countries entering the World War II. If one of the most ...
“Early in 1939, The worlds scientific community discovered that German physicists had learned the secrets of splitting the uranium atom and word spread quickly and several countries began to duplicate the experiment.” Albert Einstein warned President Roosevelt that Germany may have already built an atomic bomb. Roosevelt did not see an urgency for such a project, but agreed to proceed slowly. In 1941, British scientists pushed America to develop an atomic weapon. America’s effort was slow until 1942 when Colonel Leslie Groves took over. He quickly chose personnel, production sites and set schedules to invent the atomic
Despite all of the security used by the officials in charge of the “Manhattan Project,” soviet spies managed to leak information to the Soviet Union that allowed them to create a nuclear bomb of their own. Klaus Fuchs, an important scientist to the “Manhattan Project,” managed to move throughout the project and provide crucial information to the Soviets. David Greenglass also provi...
A young scientist who was very smart and intelligent was the creator of a bomb that killed millions. The bomb was the most powerful weapon that was ever manufactured. He changed the course of World War II. This man is Robert Oppenheimer, creator of the atomic bomb. The book “Bomb” by Steve Sheinkin, is a book that includes teamwork and how Americans made a deadly bomb that changed the course of the war. The book engages the reader through how spies share secret information with enemies. Because the physicists were specifically told not to share any information, they were not justified in supplying the Soviet Union with the bomb technology.
The theoretical physicist Albert Einstein once declared, “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination.” In order to be successful, one must know that intelligence is not the wealth of knowledge gained, rather, it is creativity, which is accurate. J. Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist who lived in the early 20th century and was plagued with problems like dysentery and design failure. J. Robert Oppenheimer created the atomic bomb with a team of scientists to overcome the problem of nuclear fission. Oppenheimer innovated a functional plutonium bomb and a uranium bomb, illuminating the physics world forever by authoring the first atomic bombs. (Allman, 2005).
This essay is based on Marshall McLuhan (1967) theory, which states that the medium is the message. McLuhan states that the form of a message determines the ways in which that message will be perceived.
He asserts that with the invention of television, writing can basically be eliminated (125). There’s no use for it anymore, after all. What can be more engaging than a form of media that stimulates the senses so? Despite the beliefs of those who lived in the 60s and 70s, the twenty-first century is unfortunately not home to the world of the Jetsons. Writing is still a very powerful form of media, for the very book that this essay is centered around is still influential, forty-nine years later! However, books and newspapers are not our sole source of the written word. Online blogs, articles, and newsletters now exist. Television and books have merged into one: the Internet. Revolutions, riots, and rebellions don’t just happen in our living rooms now, they happen on the go with us. On the subway, when we’re waiting in line at Subway, at our friend’s house as he talks about how he’s “way into subs.” The Internet is now our primary source of information. Evolution doesn’t only just occur in nature. Nonetheless, The Medium is the Massage was published in 1967, and several of McLuhan’s points were ahead of their time and remain relevant today. The most notable of points was made within the first few pages of the book where McLuhan delves into the fact that from the moment we are born to the moment we die we are under constant surveillance and that privacy essentially no
McLuhan believed in technological determinism, which is “an approach that identifies technology, or technological developments, as the central causal element in processes of change” (Croteau, Hoynes, and Milan 290). In other words, McLuhan believed that new technology drives the way cultural values and social structures develop. He was interested in the cultural effects produced by electronic media; he was especially interested in the effects of televisions. McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage argued that technology has changed the way humans
McLuhan, Marshall, Perf. Marshall Mcluhan Full lecture: The medium is the message. Perf. McLuhan, Marshall. Youtube, 1977. Web. 9 Nov 2011. .