everything.study
STS.069

Technology in a Dangerous World

Undergraduate · Historical course

Fall 2002

Topics

  • Introduction to Class
  • Reading Assignments
  • CBS Documentary on World Trade Center Attack of 9/11/01
  • Discussion of Documentary
  • The Role of MIT in a Dangerous World
  • Guest: Claude Canizares
  • Technological Disasters
  • Risk, Safety, and Accidents
  • Guest: Jamie Lewis Keith
  • Risk, Safety, and Accidents (Continued)
  • Environmental Risks
  • Tour of the MIT Museum
  • Further Discussion of Castells
  • “Artificial Hearts,” by Shelley McKellar
  • National Security
  • Technology and Identity
  • Technological Imagination
  • Trust in a Dangerous World
  • Root Causes
  • Final Review ( PDF )
  • Recommendations for MIT

Readings

  • Beck, Ulrich. The Risk Society . Translated by Mark Ritter. London: Sage, 1992, Part I, pp. 1-44.
    Listed reading
  • Castells, Manuel. “Prologue: the Net and the Self.” In The Rise of the Network Society . 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000 [1996], pp. 1-27.
    Listed reading
  • Castells, Manuel. “Communal Heavens.” In The Power of Identity . Oxford: Blackwell, 1997, pp. 1-20 and 65-67.
    Listed reading
  • Castells, Manuel. “Conclusion: Social Change in the Network Society.” In The Power of Identity , pp. 354-362.
    Listed reading
  • Castells, Manuel. “Death Denied,” and “Instant Wars.” In The Rise of the Network Society , pp. 481-491.
    Listed reading
  • Castells, Manuel. “The Other Face of the Earth: Social Movements against the New Global Order.” In The Power of Identity , pp. 68-72 and 97-109.
    Listed reading
  • Castells, Manuel. “The Perverse Connection: The Global Criminal Economy.” In End of Millennium . Oxford: Blackwell, 1998, pp. 165-205.
    Listed reading
  • Castells, Manuel. “A Powerless State?” In The Power of Identity, pp. 254-269.
    Listed reading
  • Castells, Manuel. “The Rise of the Fourth World.” In End of Millennium , pp. 70-95 and 149-165.
    Listed reading
  • Chisholm, Sallie W., et al. “Dis-Crediting Ocean Fertilization,” Science 294 (12 October 2001): 309-310.
    Listed reading
  • Galison, Peter. “An Accident of History.” In Atmospheric Flight in the Twentieth Century . Edited by Galison and Alex Roland. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000, pp. 2-43.
    Listed reading
  • Giddens, Anthony. The Consequences of Modernity . Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990, Chap. 1, 3 and 4, pp. 1-53 and 79-150.
    Listed reading
  • Gras, Alain. “Big is Beautiful.” Forthcoming in “Forum on Rethinking Technology in the Aftermath of September 11,” History and Technology 19, 1 (2003).
    Listed reading
  • Hughes, Thomas P. “The Evolution of Large Technological Systems.” In The Social Construction of Technological Systems . Edited by Wiebe Bijker, Thomas Hughes and Trevor Pinch. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1987, pp. 51-82.
    Listed reading
  • Hughes, Thomas P. “MIT as System-Builder: SAGE.” In Rescuing Prometheus . New York: Pantheon, 1998, pp. 15-67.
    Listed reading
  • MacKenzie, Donald. “Missile Accuracy: A Case Study in the Social Processes of Technological Change.” In The Social Construction of Technological Systems . Edited by Wiebe Bijker, Thomas Hughes and Trevor Pinch. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1987, pp. 195-222.
    Listed reading
  • MacKenzie, Donald. “Computer-Related Accidental Death.” In Knowing Machines: Essays on Technical Change . Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1998 [1996], pp. 185-214.
    Listed reading
  • MacKenzie, Donald. “Introduction.” In Knowing Machines , pp. 1-11.
    Listed reading
  • McEvoy, Arthur F. “Working Environments.” In Accidents in History: Injuries, Fatalities, and Social Relations . Edited by Roger Cooter and Bill Luckin. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997, pp. 59-89.
    Listed reading
  • McKellar, Shelley. “Artificial Hearts–A Technological Fix More Monstrous Than Miraculous?” Paper presented at The Technological Fix Conference, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware, October 4-5, 2002.
    Listed reading
  • McKibben, Bill. The End of Nature . New York: Random House, 1989, pp. 3-29.
    Listed reading
  • Mindell, David. War, Technology, and Experience Aboard the USS Monitor . Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 2000, Introduction, Chap. 4, and end of Conclusion, pp. 1-10, 61-69 and 144-150.
    Listed reading
  • Morison, Elting. Machines, Men, and Modern Times . Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1966, chap. 2, 4 and 6, pp. 17-44, 67-87 and 98-122.
    Listed reading
  • Mumford, Lewis. “Technology and the Nature of Man.” Technology and Culture 7, 3 (Summer 1966): 303-317.
    Listed reading
  • Murakami, Haruki. Underground . Translated by Alfred Birnbaum and Philip Gabriel. New York: Random House/Vintage, 2000, pp. 3-44, 127-131, 150-153, 215-241 and 317-332.
    Listed reading
  • Perrow, Charles. Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies . New York: Basic Books, 1984, chap. 3, pp. 62-100.
    Listed reading
  • Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. The Railway Journey . Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1986 [1977], chap. 7, 8, 9, 10 and Excursi, pp. 113-170.
    Listed reading
  • Listed reading
  • Weart, Spencer. Nuclear Fear: A History of Images . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988, chap. 6, 11, 18 and conclusion, pp. 103-127, 199-214, 348-374 and 421-426.
    Listed reading
  • Williams, Rosalind H. Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change . Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002, chap. 1, pp. 1-28.
    Listed reading
  • Adas, Michael. Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.
    Listed reading
  • Alder, Ken. The Measure of All Things . New York: Free Press, 2002.
    Listed reading
  • Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000 [1996].
    Listed reading
  • Castells, Manuel. The Power of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.
    Listed reading
  • Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. New York: Basic Books, 1983.
    Listed reading
  • Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang, 1983.
    Listed reading
  • Cronon, William. Nature’s Metropolis. New York: W.W. Norton, 1991.
    Listed reading
  • Davis, Mike. City of Quartz. London: Verso, 1990.
    Listed reading
  • Hughes, Thomas P. American Genesis. New York: Penguin Books, 1989.
    Listed reading
  • Hughes, Thomas P. Rescuing Prometheus. New York: Pantheon Books, 1998.
    Listed reading
  • Leslie, Stuart W. The Cold War and American Science. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
    Listed reading
  • MacKenzie, Donald. Knowing Machines. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998 [1996].
    Listed reading
  • MacKenzie, Donald. Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990.
    Listed reading
  • Malone, Patrick. The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics among the New England Indians. Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1991.
    Listed reading
  • McDougall, Walter . ….the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age. New York: Basic Books, 1985.
    Listed reading
  • McNeill, J. R. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the 20th Century World. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000.
    Listed reading
  • McNeill, William. The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since AD 1000. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
    Listed reading
  • Mindell, David. Between Human and Machine. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
    Listed reading
  • Mindell, David. War, Technology and Experience aboard the USS Monitor. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
    Listed reading
  • Morison, Elting. Men, Machines, and Modern Times. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1966.
    Listed reading
  • Parker, Geoffrey. The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800 . 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
    Listed reading
  • Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986.
    Listed reading
  • Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. The Railway Journey: The Industrialization and Perception of Time and Space in the 19th Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986 [1977].
    Listed reading
  • Smith, Merritt Roe. Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977.
    Listed reading
  • Smith, Merritt Roe, ed. Military Enterprise and Technological Change. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985.
    Listed reading
  • Traweek, Sharon. Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988.
    Listed reading
  • Winner, Langdon. The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988 [1986].
    Listed reading
  • White, Richard. The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995.
    Listed reading
Sources