Machines & Monsters

3 units

There’s no shortage of popular commentary on the coming technological future where AI, robots, and computers are figured as monstrosities bent on social upheaval and civilization destruction. At the same time, our everyday experience is saturated with these technologies in ways that overload our resources for critical attention — especially regarding the histories that inform our contemporary anxieties. To recover a richer understanding of our moment, we’ll investigate the cultures of war, information industrialism, politics, and espionage that operate throughout the 20th century. We’ll trace how information technology emerges as the vital infrastructure for conducting both so-called ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ wars, for protecting state secrets, and for clandestine spying of foreign and domestic actors. We’ll also map the hype-and-collapse cycles of AI pursuits that mark the second half of the century. Throughout the term our work will make visible how popular culture cataloged the churn of social imagination and discourse caught up in the unrelenting scale and pace of informational and technological change.