- Technology, People, and Power

Catalog description

One common understanding of technology is that it provides a set of tools with which humanity can control its environment. Philosophical thought about technology suggests that the situation may well be not only far more complex, but radically different. Life without the technologies we use daily can seem unimaginable. Yet those very same technologies raise profound political, social, and ecological concerns. Some authors have argued that technological advances in fields such as computing, medicine, robotics, and artificial intelligence are fundamentally changing (or have already fundamentally changed) who and what we are by making us post- or transhuman. This course poses questions such as: Does technology affect us in merely superficial or more fundamental ways? Has our technology made us fundamentally different from our ancestors? Are there essential differences between types of technology (hand tools, “simple” machines, cybernetic devices, so-called “smart” technologies, etc.)? How is technology related to politics? Is technology value-neutral? Can technology be sexist or racist?