Predict, Surveil, and Punish: Law and Technology in the Digital Age

Catalog description

You use technology every day. You grew up entertaining yourselves on smartphones and tablets, completing school work on personal computers, and communicating with your peers through social media. But have you ever stopped to consider how all of this technology use affects you, those around you, or society as a whole? This course offers a deep dive into how technology affects our lives, with special attention to how technology use affects responses to crime. We will begin with fundamental concepts regarding how technology affects our identities and work, and then explore how technology affects privacy, law, and inequality. We will investigate these issues through sociological theory, cultural commentary, movies, books, and TV shows. And we will consider technology’s promises and perils. Does technology improve our lives, does it destroy our social fabric, and what can we do about it?.