Title The squares : US physical and engineering scientists in the long 1970s / Cyrus C.M. Mody

Published Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2022]

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Description 1 online resource Series Inside technology Contents 1: Society in Disarray? Professional Societies and Physics in the 1970s -- 2: Turn On, Tune In, Start Up: The Experimental Life in Santa Barbara -- 3: A Federation of Bull Sessions: Interdisciplinarity at Stanford -- 4: Nothing Fails Like Success: From Moon to Earth at NASA -- 5: Mistaking the Sunset for the Dawn: Jack Kilby's Solar Boom and Bust -- 6: An End to Exceptionalism: Philips, Signetics, and Global Silicon Valley -- 7: Engineering and Applied Physics in the Age of Fracture Summary "Looks at how "square" engineers and scientists accomodated their work to a rapidly shifting social and political landscape in the long 1970s"-- Provided by publisher When ungroovy scientists did groovy science: how non-activist scientists and engineers adapted their work to a rapidly changing social and political landscape. In The Squares, Cyrus Mody shows how, between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, some scientists and engineers who did not consider themselves activists, New Leftists, or members of the counterculture accommodated their work to the rapidly changing social and political landscape of the time. These "square scientists," Mody shows, began to do many of the things that the counterculture urged: turn away from military-industrial funding, become more interdisciplinary, and focus their research on solving problems of civil society. During the period Mody calls "the long 1970s," ungroovy scientists were doing groovy science. Mody offers a series of case studies of some of these collective efforts by non-activist scientists to use their technical knowledge for the good of society. He considers the region around Santa Barbara and the interplay of public universities, think tanks, established firms, new companies, philanthropies, and social movement organizations. He looks at Stanford University's transition from Cold War science to commercialized technoscience; NASA's search for a post-Apollo mission; the unsuccessful foray into solar energy by Nobel laureate Jack Kilby; the "civilianization" of the US semiconductor industry; and systems engineer Arthur D. Hall's ill-fated promotion of automated agriculture. -- Publisher Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Print version record Subject Science -- United States. Scientists -- United States. Engineers -- United States. Physical scientists -- United States. History of engineering & technology. History of science. History of the Americas. Engineers Physical scientists Science Scientists United States Form Electronic book ISBN 9780262369343 0262369346 9780262369350 0262369354

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