Technology and the Modern World

Undergraduate

From the Industrial Revolution and the Space Race to IUDs and A.I. lovers, the history of technology is as personal as it is global. Technology has presented societies with new possibilities and new challenges. This course charts a critical social history of technology from the early modern period to the present day. We question: What is technology? What role has technology played in the often-perilous pursuit of the social, political, and cultural transformations we call modernity? At what (or whose) cost? We consider how technology and the drive for technological innovation have shaped ideas, culture, bodies, power, and politics on the global scale. In addition to guns, steam, and the Industrial Revolution and the costly calculus of war in the Nuclear Age, we examine how gender, sex, race, animals, and environments act as and inform technology, shaping the matter of everyday life. We conclude in the contemporary moment by reflecting on AI, data, and our changing relationship to AI in the age of the attention economy and ChatGPT. To underscore the pervasiveness of the question of technology to the human condition, we engage a diverse range of course materials, including canonical texts in the history of technology, historical documents, public writing, literature, material culture, and art. No prior knowledge of the history of science and technology is required for the course. HU 0 Course cr HTBA