Technology and Work

Catalog description

In recent years, public conversations about the relationship between technology and work seem to have been conducted with particular fervor: claims of revolutionary ease and freedom sit side-by-side with dystopian visions of exploitation, surveillance, and growing alienation. Will technological development lead to widespread deskilling or a new "sharing economy"? Will it enrich the few at the expense of the many or bring general prosperity? Are Uber, Etsy, and Amazon vanguards of an ideal future or harbingers of doom? These concerns—though especially apparent today—are by no means new. In this course, we will examine their history, focusing in particular on North America and Europe in the past two centuries. We will uncover the ways in which new technologies—from the assembly line to the washing machine to the personal computer—transformed what it meant to work, and how workers, their families, and the companies who employed them reacted to these changes. We'll pay attention to who benefitted, who was harmed, and what broader economic, cultural, or social purposes these technologies were designed to serve. We'll talk about Henry Ford, but also about women, children, people with disabilities, and racial and ethnic minorities. We'll ask how and why certain kinds of work are made invisible, discuss how the promise of new technology can function as a political salve, and consider the social implications of novel forms of labor. We will also look at work within the "tech" industry itself, examining how the industry created a powerful vision of itself populated by particular kinds of work and workers. This course fulfills Dietrich College's "Contextual Thinking" general education requirement. Course Website: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/history/