Topics: Environment, Technology, Society

Catalog description

This Learning Community examines the relation between people, technology, and environment in historical and contemporary societies, and in competing visions of the future. Always, technology mediates our relation to the environment, both local and global, for better and worse. We need technology to produce energy, food, clothing, shelter, goods, and more; but technology also produces waste and pollution, and we quickly find ourselves needing to develop more technology to reduce and recycle. Paradoxically, the more technology we develop, the more food we need to produce to support growing numbers of people and their growing needs and wants, the more we appear to destroy the ability of the earth to keep supporting us at all. Today, our relation with the environment is on an entirely new scale, as we alter not just landscapes, but the atmosphere itself. To examine problems such as the treadmill of technology and production, we will draw on readings across the humanities, philosophy and anthropology, social sciences, and environmental studies. We will discuss cases in the United States, the European Union, and societies around the world, to gain a comparative perspective on culture and technology. Finally, we will work on relevant solutions for environmental and social policy.