Technology & Society
Sociology 120A– Spring 2016
Mondays 2:00-4:50pm – Pearlman 203
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Prof. Edward J.
Office: Bernstein-Marcus BuildingOffice hours: T 1:00-2:00
Email: & by appointment
781.736.2131
Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.
Melvin Kranzberg, 1986
Technology is a powerful force. It has been hailed as a way to cure everything from world hunger to bad breath. Some would say it made us human, and has not yet finished the job. But technological changeis not an unqualified blessing: Technologies frequently have negative effects for particular people, at particular times, or in particular circumstances. Some negative consequences are unanticipated, some are predictable, and some are intentional features of the design or implementation. But because technologies are indispensable for solving problems and improving the quality of life, societies invest in their design and development.
This course will explore the relationship between various technologies and various aspects of society. We will continually pose four important questions. First, where do technologies come from and why do they work as they do? Technologies are human creations, and so their forms and uses reveal the interests and purposes of the people, institutions, and societies that build them. Second, how do technologies shape our world? We will explore the variety of ways by which machines and techniques become embedded in society and thereby shape institutions, interactions, and values. Third, what kind of future do we want? Many of the articles we will read argue that certain values are essential to a just society, which challenges us to consider which values we should hold most dear and defend. And fourth, how can we make decisions about technologies that will get us to the future we want? Once we understand the role of technology in society and the world we want to build, we must develop strategies for getting us from here to there.
Much of the semester’s readings will be found in Johnson & Wetmore’s Technology and Society: Building Our Sociotechnical Future (MIT Press, 2008). Students may not need to purchase this book as all readings are available electronically, but it does have some additional information and introductions that you may find useful throughout the semester. And books are a wonderful and enduring technology.
Learning Goals
If the course succeeds, by the end of the semester you will:
Understand technologies as human creations that have, in turn, helped make us who we are;
Perceive and analyze the social values and power relationships built into technologies;
Identify ways to guide or shape emerging technologies in ways that promote equity and justice;
Improve critical thinking, complex reasoning, and communication (writing, speaking) abilities.
Course Requirements
Class meetingswill combine discussions that explore ideas and their implications with brief “lectures” that explain, integrate, and present new material. In order to benefit from our classes, you will need to prepare. Simply reading the required articles is necessary but hardly sufficient: you will also need to think about them. To encourage reflection, please write a one-page commentary or reflection about the coursereading. These are commentaries, not summaries, and so we wish to read what you thought about the reading, how you connect or compare it to other course ideas, current events, or other things you have learned. We expect the papers to demonstrate your understanding of the readings by the way you use the ideas and arguments they offer. The papers will be graded credit/no credit, must be handed in on paper at class time, and will not be accepted late (or early, or by email or owl). Taken altogether they are worth 30% of your course grade.
During classes we will explain, explore, extend, and integrate ideas from the readings and current events, and so it is very important that you attend and participate. Each student will be asked to choose an article relevant to course topics and share it with us. Class attendance and participation are worth 10% of your course grade.
Your major academic work for the course will be to write a12-to-15page(typed, double-spaced) research paper and to present an early version of the paper in class. The paper will allow you to explore in greater depth one of the themes of the course or a case study of the relationship between a particular technology and a particular aspect of society that interests you. This assignment has severalparts:
(1) A2- to 3-page prospectus that will include a brief description of your topic, an explanation of how you will approach it, and the resources you will be using (10% of your course grade).
(2) A draft of the complete paper for in-class review and advice (10%);
(3) An in-class presentation of your research (10%)
(4) A final versionof your paper that will be due in class (and submitted through Turnitin on Latte)and will be worth 30% of your course grade.
You really want to write the best drafts you can because the better your work the more helpful the feedback you will receive.
Grades will range from A+ to E, with +s and –s.
Attendance Please come to every class prepared to discuss the readings. If other activities (sports, debate, job interviews, etc.) will interfere with your class attendance, we should talk about this during the first week of classes.
Late Assignments
Unexcused late assignments will not be accepted, and recurrent excuses for late assignments will be discussed in person with the professor.
Academic Integrity
You are expected to adhere to Brandeis’s Student Code of Conduct. All work that you turn in must be your own and must not be copied from published sources, including the Internet. Google makes it easy for students to find material on the web and equally easy for professors to identify its source. It is not worth the risk.
All students are responsible for reviewing and following Brandeis’s policies on academic integrity, which may be found in Section 4 of Rights and Responsibilities from the Brandeis Student Handbook. If you fail to meet the standards of academic integrity in any of the criteria listed on the university policy website, sanctions will be imposed by the instructor, school, and/or dean. Academic dishonesty includes borrowing ideas without proper citation, copying others’ work (including information posted on the internet), and failing to turn in your own work for group projects. Please be aware that if you follow an argument closely, even if it is not directly quoted, you must provide a citation to the publication, including the author, date and page number. If you directly quote a source, you must use quotation marks and provide the same sort of citation for each quoted sentence or phrase.
Students with documented disabilities who are entitled to an accommodation should discuss this with me and present their letter of accommodation as early as possible in the semester. If you have questions about documenting a disability or requesting an academic accommodation, please contact Beth Rodgers-Kay in Academic Services at 736-3470 ().
Course Calendar
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“Monday,”January 20th
Opening class
Introductions, what we’re about…aims and plans.
Monday, January 25th
Freeman J. Dyson, “Technology & Social Justice,” The Sun, The Genome, & The Internet: Tools of Scientific Revolutions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 61-74.
Francis Fukuyama, “The Prolongation of Life,” Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), pp. 57-71.
E.M. Forster, “The Machine Stops,” Oxford and Cambridge Review, November 1909, pp. 83-122.
One-page paper due in class on the week’s readings
Monday, February 1st
Interagency Working Group on Nanoscience, Engineering, and Technology “Nanotechnology: Shaping the World Atom by Atom,” September 1999, Washington D.C., pp. 1-2, 8.
Bill Joy, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” WIRED, Vol. 8, No. 4, April 2000, pp. 238-262.
Robert L. Heilbroner, “Do Machines Make History?” Technology and Culture, Volume 8, No. 3, July 1967, pp. 335-345.
Lewis Mumford, “An Appraisal of Lewis Mumford’s Technics and Civilization” (online)
One-page paper due in class on the week’s readings
Monday, February 8th
Trevor J. Pinch and Wiebe Bijker, “The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts” in W. Bijker, T.P. Hughes, and T.J. Pinch (eds.), The Social Construction of Technological Systems (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1987), pp. 17-50.
Thomas P. Hughes, “Technological Momentum,” in Leo Marx and Merritt Roe Smith (eds.), Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1994), pp. 101-113.
Joel Tarr, “The City and Technology” (online)
Add reading on wired city—Pentland
One-page paper due in class on the week’s readings
Monday, February 15th
Presidents’ Day—no class
Monday, February 22nd
Bruno Latour, “Where Are the Missing Masses?”
Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 19-39.
David Bromwich, “The Hi-Tech Mess of Higher Education’ (online)
One-page paper due in class on the week’s readings
Monday, February 29th
Judy Wajcman, “FromWomen and Technology to Gendered Technoscience”
Richard Dyer, White (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp.83-94.
Cynthia Cockburn, “The Material of Male Power,” Feminist Review, 9 (1981), pp. 41-58. (online)
Rachel Weber, “Cockpit design…”
One-page paper due in class on the week’s readings
Monday, March 7th
Daniel Sarewitz, “Pas de Trois: Science, Technology, and the Marketplace”
Edward J. Woodhouse, “Nanoscience, Green Chemistry, and the Privileged Position of Science,” in Scott Frickel and Kelly Moore (eds.), The New Political Sociology of Science (University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), pp. 148-179. (online)
Harry Collins & Trevor Pinch, “The Naked Launch: Assigning Blame for the Challenger Explosion,” TheGolem at Large: What You Should Know about Technology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002) pp. 30-56.
STEPS Manifesto (online)
Paper Prospectus Duein Class for Discussion
Monday, March 14th
Jameson M. Wetmore, “Amish Technology: Reinforcing Values, Building Community,” IEEE’s Technology & Society Magazine 26(2), June 2007, pp. 10-21.
Katie Shilton, “Values Levers: Building Ethics into Design” ST&HV 38 (3): 374-397 (online)
Kim Tallbear, Tribal Housing, Co-Design & Cultural Sovereignty
One-page paper due in class on the week’s readings
Monday, March21st
StellanWelin, “Reproductive Ectogenesis: The third era of human reproduction and some moral consequences,” Science and Engineering Ethics, Vol. 10, no. 4, October 2004, pp. 615-626.
Michael Specter, “A Life of Its Own” (online only)
Synthetic Biology Ethics—selected parts
One-page paper due in class on the week’s readings
Monday, March 28th
HOLIDAY—no class
Monday, April 4
George Ritzer, “Control: Human and Nonhuman Robots,” The McDonaldization of Society (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2004), pp. 106-133, 269-274.
Internet of Things
Several short robotics articles from Science
One-page paper due in class on the week’s readings
Monday, April 11
RaffiKhatchadourian, “A Star in a Bottle”
Patrick McCray, “Globalization with Hardware”
Sharlissa Moore, “Envisioning the Social and Political Dynamics…” (online)
Bill McKibben, “Power to the People” (online)
One-page paper due in class on the week’s readings
Monday, April 18th
Research Presentations
Paper Drafts Due in Class for Discussion
Monday, April 25th
Break! No class
Monday, May 2nd
John Gilliom and Torin Monahan, “Everyday Resistance” (online only)
RoopaliPhadke, “People’s Science in Action: The Politics of Protest and Knowledge Brokering in India,” Society and Natural Resources18 (2005), pp. 363-375.
Finalone-page paper due in class
Finalresearch paper dueon a date tba
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