Framing Production by Paul Rosen

Framing Production by Paul Rosen

The production of bicycles in Britain and the United States recently suffered severe setbacks. The renowned American Schwinn brand was downgraded to the mass market by its new owners following bankruptcy, and Britain's Raleigh came close to closure because of high debts and poor returns, saved only by a last-minute management buyout. In both cases, market share and credibility were lost to newer, more innovative firms, as well as to a recentering of the global bicycle industry in the Far East.

This book reflects on such changes by setting them within a sociological and historical context. It focuses on the British bicycle industry in the interwar years and in the 1980s and the 1990s--periods characterized by modernization of production and of industrial organization, by changing relations among players in the industry, by new developments in labor relations, and by changes in interactions between markets and product design. In particular, it traces the fortunes of the Raleigh Cycle Company from its beginnings as an innovative young firm, through massive expansion of its products and markets and the assimilation of many of its competitors, into further innovation amid market contraction and management inertia, and finally into a phase of global restructuring that has transformed and reduced its role within the industry.

The book explores the complex ways in which product design, production methods, industrial organization, and the cultures of cycling have interacted to create a succession of sociotechnical frames for the bicycle. At the same time, on an activist level, the book promotes a participatory politics of bicycle technology and a less car-centered view of personal transportation.

Paul Rosen is a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Utah with appointments in the Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute and the School of Computing. In his 5 years in the visualization community, he has worked with countless domain scientists in the application of visualization techniques to their data, as well as in the developing new visualization techniques. Dr. Rosen received his PhD from the Computer Science Department of Purdue University in 2010. He is the co-author of over 35 peer-reviewed papers, and along with his collaborators, he has received awards for best paper at PacificVis 2014 and SIBGRAPI 2013, and the Computer Graphics & Applications best paper runner-up in 2011.

Kristin Potter is a Research Associate at the University of Oregon where she works as a visualization specialist in the College of Arts and Science's Research Support Service. In this position, she is tasked with bringing visualization to the University by working with researchers across campus to expose and address their visualization needs. This work allows her to not only focus on her own research goals, but also interact with a cross-cutting group of collaborators from fields including physics, neuroscience, geography, architecture, English, and history. Before coming to Oregon, she worked as a Research Scientist at the SCI Institute at the University of Utah, researching methods in uncertainty visualization. She received her PhD and MS from the University of Utah and her bachelors from the University of Oregon, double majoring in computer science and fine arts.