Metastudies.net

Welcome to Metastudies.net!

Why "metastudies".  Well, metastudies are studies from "above" - from the outside looking down. That is, they examine things within a context. I like to work this way, and my professional background of science and technology studies (together with history and philosophy of science, and theoretical physics) support that sort of work.  So in 2003, when I realised I needed a web domain, I thought it would be cool to own "metastudies.net".

In short, this website is simply a web based collection of those idiosyncratic outputs that I have chosen to make available.  It currently includes

• My recent publications: a list of recent publications, media appearances and other presentations.
• Worlds-in-transition.com: is the site of the book by Joseph Camilleri and myself (Jim Falk) entitled "Worlds in Transition: Evolving Governance Across a Stressed Planet, Edward Elgar, UK, December 200
• Calculant:  The website for my developing thoughts about the history of calculation (prompted in part by a small collection of antique calculating devices, and vice-versa, of course).
• Cassirer and Cohen: histories, relatives and descendants.  Not long before my father died I thought I needed to understand the family background I came from, scattered as it was by the efforts of Hitler.  This website was an outcome of that, and now contains overviews, documents and of course a family tree for some 4,000 related people.
• AWI-CMAS.com: An informal working website for the Association of Pacific Rim Universities Sustainability and Climate Change Research Program international teams, which I worked to establish in 1997 and has developed interestingly since.
• Energyscience.org.au: Briefing papers on the prospects of different energy sources in the search for sustainability by a group of researchers who informally formed themselves into the "Energy Science Coalition" in response to an attempt under the Howard Government to introduce nuclear power into Australia.
• GEAN: The Group of Expert Advisors for NGOs. This was an idea that I developed for several years. It is still plausible, but has yet to gain sufficient momentum to be called any sort of a success.
• The Meaning of the Web (1995): I presented this paper to the very first international conference in Australia focussed on the developing World Wide Web.  It is one of my most cited papers and the ideas in it have reappeared in a surprisingly wide number of contexts.