6 Conclusion I hope you have found it interesting to look at the various plays I have discussed in this unit, not only because they are entertaining but, mainly, because they are instructive and, often, quite compact. What plays can do is to stimulate your own emotions, which, as I argued in the unit, is a powerful beginning to ethical reasoning. Drama provides ready-made analogues for exploring experiences, often experiences that you have not had but also experiences you might face yourself. The skilful
5.6 Identification We end Act 1 with a clear understanding that it is actually too late for Ned to pull out, even if he wanted to: the weapon has been designed. If he were concerned about the military technology, he should really have worried about that before he took on the job. But he does not, at the end of Act 1, want to pull out. He clearly wants to see the project through. Materialising this idea is what he lives for, and he says this is at the cutting edge, this is where technology is. These ideas are go
5.5 Rhetorical devices I talked a bit about Ned's motivations, but I am not quite sure about what he is trying to do to be persuasive. He has this interest in aesthetics, but in giving a detailed explanation of a military technology he is working on, he, from time to time, uses an analogy. One analogy he uses is the ‘flocking of starlings’, which illustrates rather the principle of operation of the technology and suggests that it is a kind of an existence proof. It implies this technology might actually work. B
1.8 ‘Ethics’, ‘ethical’ and authority There is some confusion over the uses of the terms ‘ethical’ and ‘ethics’. Often people use the adjective ‘ethical’ to signal things that they would expect virtuous people to do. That is they use the word ‘ethical’ instead of ‘good’. Companies, institutions and even governments might claim to have ‘ethical’ policies. Probably such a policy declares the ideology. For example, saying that ‘sustainability is ethical’ may be part of an individual's ethic but it is a ta
1 Putting the unit in context This unit, taken from T883 Business operations: delivering value, is concerned with the management of ‘processes’ – the organised set of resources and related activities that are essential for the delivery of goods and/or services to customers. These processes or ‘operations’ form the very essence of any enterprise, and it is critically important that they are managed well to be effective and efficient. The full course consists of three main blocks of study:
8.2 Wet etches: acids and bases The simplest etches use a liquid solvent that converts the material into a soluble compound or a gas. Unfortunately, most materials used in micro-devices have few soluble compounds, so some very aggressive chemicals are needed to attack them. Here is a list of some of the most commonly used ones: Hydrofluoric acid (chemical formula HF) is used to convert silicon dioxide into water-soluble H2SiF6 (plus some hydrogen and water). It
7.4.7 Deposition of patterned films: lift-off and damascene We have assumed throughout this section that the deposited film will cover the entire wafer surface and that its patterning will be performed by subsequent lithography and etching steps. However, some materials, most notably copper, can be very difficult to remove with micrometre-scale precision or better, making this sequence extremely difficult. Since copper, with its high electrical conductivity and good chemical properties, is increasingly used in microelectronic device fabrication, anoth
1.2 Earthquakes and volcanoes The disasters that first come to mind are those where the earth itself changes in an unpredictable and sudden way: earthquakes volcanic eruptions tidal waves These natural phenomena are now known to be interconnected: earthquakes result from vast plates of the earth's crust meeting and moving against one another. Volcanic explosions, such as Krakatoa (1883) and Mount St Helens (1980) are also manifestations
2.7 Music matters There was little difference in sound quality between the phonograph cylinder and the gramophone disc. The limited frequency response of the acoustic recording and playback process restricted the sounds that could be reproduced. Instruments tended to be limited to brass and piano, and middle-register voices (alto and tenor) were the most suitable. So why did the disc succeed over the cylinder? The answer has little to do with technology and much more to do with the tenor Enrico Caruso and the
1 Capturing sound Have you ever listened carefully to a recording of your own voice? In this first activity, I want you to make a short recording of your voice. Note: This optional activity requires the use of a 3 Sound production in musical instruments Musical instruments come in all shapes and sizes and produce an enormous variety of different sounds. Yet, with the exception of certain electronic instruments, the basic physical principles by which sound is produced are the same for all instruments – including the human voice. In this section, I shall introduce some of these principles. These will then be expanded upon over the rest of the unit. Remember I told you that when a musician plays an instrument they cause it to vibrate. T References 19 Part 3: 3 Sustaining and disruptive innovation Once an innovation starts diffusing into the marketplace it can have differing degrees of impact. As mentioned in Part 1, although innovations generally offer progress, there are some that complement existing ways of doing things and some that are more dramatic in their impact. In his book called The Innovator's Dilemma Clayton M. Christensen (2003) labels these two types of innovation sustaining and disruptive. Sustaining innovations are those that improve the performance of est 10.9.1 New materials The discovery of new materials, exploration of their properties and the invention of new industrial processes is a huge field of study in its own right. The potential rewards for a company discovering a successful application of a new material are great. An example of this is shape memory alloys (SMAs). SMAs are mixtures of metals that, after being stress treated, can be deformed significantly but then triggered to return to their original shape. Some display unusual elastic properties 10.6 What drives invention in organisations? Much invention and nearly all innovation nowadays take place inside organisations – from small start-up companies to well-established multinationals. This is mainly because increasingly invention and innovation require access to technology and resources beyond the scope of most individuals. But it is also because competitiveness and survival depend on the continual improvement of a company's products and processes. This provides a strong incentive for companies to invest in both the increme 10.5 Desire to help others This is a less common motivation but it shows not everyone is driven by money. In 1991 the inventor Trevor Baylis saw a BBC documentary about the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa. What was needed was a way of broadcasting the safe-sex message to people in areas without electricity and where batteries for a radio could cost a month's wages. Solar power wouldn't necessarily help as most people who could get to a radio listened in the evening after work. While absorbing this information he ima 6.1 Evolutionary development Most of us have some experience of the evolutionary development and the success of new technology. The Walkman personal stereo cassette player has evolved into the Discman CD player and more recently into digital music players. The computer has developed from its beginnings as government and university research machines in the 1940s (the first electronic computer filled an entire room and had a memory of 16 kilobytes) to palm-sized personal digital assistants each one of which has more comput 4.8 Has the telephone led to any related or spin-off products? There have been a number of branches of the telegraph and the telephone family tree where research and experiment into one technology have contributed to the development of another. An early example was Edison inventing the phonograph. He'd been working on a telegraph repeater to record telegraph signals using a stylus to vibrate onto and indent a sheet of paper. The idea was that when the indented paper passed across the stylus again the indentations would cause identical vibrations an 1 Introduction Designed products surround us all and range from bus tickets to buildings. One of the primary considerations in all fields of design is ‘usability’ and, increasingly, the phenomenon of ‘user-centred design’. This can focus on physical attributes of products but increasingly it depends on an understanding of our cognitive abilities required to operate even simple products. All people studying this unit will have some experience of designs that are not usable (perhaps mobile phones or c 5.14.3 Electrodialysis Electrodialysis is an electrochemical process in which ion transfer separates salt from water. It is effective only for substances that can be ionized: for example, salt (NaCl) becomes, in solution, a mixture of Na+ and Cl− ions. (Silica, on the other hand, does not ionize and hence is not removed by electrodialysis. It could, however, be removed by reverse osmosis.) When electrodes, connected to a suitable direct current supply, are immersed in a salt solution, curren
Activity 1 (Optional)
