Jascha Grübel

Author: Jascha Grübel

  • BSTP – Lecture 1: History of Technology and Society I

    Bridging Science, Technology and Policy will today cover the history of technology and society and how they interact. The first part covers the technical innovations up to the industrial revolution. Science is how the environment around human functions. It is not human-centric. Technology on the other hand is made by humans to improve human live.…

  • Cornerstone Course – Day 5: Digital Society – Big Data

    Digital Society is a very elastic phrase. We will explore three examples: Network Neutrality Privacy and Surveillance Big Data All are focused on how technology changes society. It is a contested topic on whether the impact is positive or negative. Issues are at the intersection of information and communications technologies and society, law, and public…

  • Cornerstone Course – Day 5: Digital Society – Privacy and Surveillance

    Digital Society is a very elastic phrase. We will explore three examples: Network Neutrality Privacy and Surveillance Big Data All are focused on how technology changes society. It is a contested topic on whether the impact is positive or negative. Issues are at the intersection of information and communications technologies and society, law, and public…

  • Cornerstone Course – Day 5: Digital Society – Network Neutrality

    Digital Society is a very elastic phrase. We will explore three examples: Network Neutrality Privacy and Surveillance Big Data All are focused on how technology changes society. It is a contested topic on whether the impact is positive or negative. Issues are at the intersection of information and communications technologies and society, law, and public…

  • Sugar and Fat Policy in the US

    A recent article in the New York Times illustrated the difficulties of creating policies. In particular, the article came to the conclusion, that the policy push against fatty food – a standard policy across the world – has been orchestrated by the the sugar industry. The interesting part is, that they did not lie about…

  • Geels’ Technological Transitions and System Innovations

    Technological transitions and system innovations: A Co-Evolutionary and Socio-Technical Analysis(Geels, 2004)is a mandatory reading of the core course Bridging Science, Technology and policy. The book analyses how technological changes transform societal functions such as transport, communication, housing and energy supply. According to Geels social and technological aspects are always intertwined and constitute each other. The…

  • Cornerstone Course – Day 4: Omitted

    For personal reasons I did not join the 4th day of the cornerstone course. Some notes may be added at a later point in time.

  • Cornerstone Course – Day 3: Urbanisation II

    This entry will deal with urbanisation is from the view of UN Habitat and all numbers come from them. 4 billion people (54% of people) live in urban areas. Of those 1 billion live in Informal Settlements (or slums) where basic services and tenure security are lacking. However, cities account for 80% of GDP. Urbanisation…

  • Cornerstone Course – Day 3: Urbanisation I

    There is a claim that more 50% of humankind live in cities. This claim, however, is wrong. The reason is that a city and an urban environment is not the same and the correct description would be that more than 50% live in urban environments. This differentiation has a huge impact, Caracas, Mexico City and…

  • Cornerstone Course – Day 3: Water quality

    Water has many exotic physical properties: surface tension, transparency in green and blue wavelengths (allows photosynthesis), protection from wavelengths shorter than UV light (high biodiversity). Surface water however looses lots of biodivserty (76% in freshwater, 39% in seawater). The physiological water cycle in humans consist of 5 litres of blood that transport sugars, amino acids…