Technology and the World We Inherit: A Global History

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This class examines the history of technology over the last 250 years. This history has gifted many of us with long lives, an abundance of tools and toys, and immense power at our fingertips. It also means that we live in a fully engineered world: from the food we eat to the ways we move through space, the places we live and work, and many of the ways we interact with our fellow humans. It has left us with alternate visions of technological utopia (a world without work?) or of technological apocalypse (climate change and AI). Technology--that is, humans' effort to manipulate the world around us--touches nearly every aspect of our lives. This course focuses on the interaction between technological innovation and social, economic, and political contexts in countries and places around the world. We will examine specific issues and episodes in the global history of technology in the modern world, with some attention to engineers and engineering. Engineers came to design, implement, and manage nearly all elements of the modern world from their positions within corporations and state bureaucracies; they quickly became the primary agents of "development" in the twentieth century. The class assumes no prior knowledge and is designed for students with majors in the humanities, social science, and STEM disciplines. (new description)