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Technology and Society Are Unthinkable Without Each Other — Each Provides the Means and Framework in Which the Other Develops

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Technology and Society Are Unthinkable Without Each Other — Each Provides the Means and Framework in Which the Other Develops HIS/ENG/SOC 277 AND SOCIETY TECHNOLOGY An Information Technology & Society Certificate Program Requirement hiremelive.com RISK, REGULATION, INNOVATION, ETHICS, POLITICS ... Technological questions are social as well. This course investigates the social and historical contexts of technological change, and the ways in which technologies impact society. Technology and society are unthinkable without each other — each provides the means and framework in which the other develops. To explore this dynamic, this course investigates a wide array of questions on the interaction between technology, society, politics, and economics, emphasizing the themes of innovation and maturation, systems and regulation, risk and failure, and ethics and expertise. Specific topics covered include nuclear power and disasters, green energy, the development and regulation of the Internet, medical expertise and controversy, intellectual property, the financial crisis, and the electric power grid. TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS 11-11:50AM IN MCCORMICK 101 Prof. Janet Vertesi PRECEPTS ON THURSDAY AFTERNOONS & FRIDAY MORNINGS Sociology Department Wallace Hall Rm 122 WITH ALEX BOLFRASS (POLITICS) & CLARK BERNIER (SOCIOLOGY) [email protected] 609-258-8724 [1] PARTICIPATION 20% MIDTERM 15% * FINAL EXAM 25% PROJECT 40% You are expected to attend all A take-home midterm over A three-hour examination The capstone project. lectures and precepts. Your the break will cover major during the exam period. It Described below. You will participation in precept concepts in the lectures and will be cumulative but stress share the same grade with discussion is essential to the readings, as well as material from the last half of your partner unless the mastering course material. substantive points of the term. Format is similar to instructor has substantive discussion in precept. Please post a response to the the midterm exam. All reasons to believe the work *Seniors may opt out if they precept question to students must take this has been unevenly divided tell their preceptor in Blackboard 1hr before precept. advance. exam. and performed. Project Information Podcast: Due April 30, 5pm must also cite scholarly work (such as monographs and journals) that Create a 10-minute audio addresses your topic. The website For the final project, you will form podcast, turned in as an MP3 file, in should have five (5) separate pages, and into teams of two. The goal of the final which you and your partner debate you can include no more than thirty (30) project is to analyze a contemporary the issue in question, being sure to links. technology using the frameworks engage with relevant social technical Much like a research paper, your discussed in class. You will explore this issues and make reference to examples website must contain an argument, topic through a short podcast and a and analytical techniques from the class. and cite evidence for its claims. website or some other interactive Format and presentation of the podcast Although the website can be navigated technology. I describe these elements in are entirely up to you, but keep in mind non-linearly to access the information in detail below. If you have difficulty that your podcast will be evaluated on multiple different ways, this does not finding a partner, please contact the the basis of how well the two of you mean that it can be designed randomly. professor or your preceptor by Week 4 present the various aspects of the issue Students are expected to give serious of the course, and you will be paired in question. Ten minutes is not a long thought to the structure of the site, and with someone who has similar interests. time, use your proposal and feedback to how it presents the issues in a from it to plan plan in advance which balanced manner. Proposal: Due April 3, 5pm issues you wish to discuss before you hit With your partner, select one of the “Record.” You should cite references ten topics listed under “Project Topics” within the podcast, and provide a below. In no more than a single page, bibliography with your audio file. PROJECT TOPICS describe the following: your proposed Website: Due May 12, 5pm Choose from among the topic, which analytical approaches you following issues: will take to the topic based on our You and your partner will design readings, a short outline of your an informative website** on one of the Citizen solar power following ten topics. The website !! podcast, yourplan for your website or Predictive policing interactive project, and your timeline for should include links or references to the !! work on the project. The goal of the sources made in constructing it, and be The Keystone oil pipeline proposal is to get feedback from your able to guide an educated layperson !! instructors about the viability of your through the major parameters of the Music streaming project. To that end, you should present issue and the nuances of its analysis. services (e.g. Spotify) ! as complete a plan as possible. Not all of your sources can be other DIY Manufacturing and websites or journalistic articles; you the makers’ movement ! The Ebola vaccine ** INTERACTIVE PROJECT OPTION ! links and citations included. This The One Laptop Per This year students may, instead of a artifact must also contain an Child project website, choose to create another argument and evidence for its claims. ! piece of interactive technology, such For more on designing effective Digital wallets (e.g. as a mobile app, a game, or technological artifacts that present a Google Wallet, Apple interactive display. In this case, the Pay) critical argument see the following: ! same requirements apply: at least five Military robots pages of text (which may accompany - Agre, Critical Technical Practice ! the artifact as a short paper) with - Sengers et al, Reflective Design Civic open data [2] COURSE SCHEDULE: READINGS & DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1: Three Fallacies about “technology” and “society No reading for first class 2: The politics of technology Claude Fischer, 2014, “All Tech is Social,” Boston Review Blog. OINTS Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts have Politics?,” Daedalus 109 (1980): 121-136. TARTING P Ruth Schwartz Cowan, “How the Refrigerator Got its Hum,” in Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman, S The Social Shaping of Technology (Open University Press, 1985). 1: The social construction of technology 1 Trevor Pinch and Ronald Kline, “Users as Agents of Technological Change: The Social Construction of the Automobile in the Rural United States,” Technology and Culture 37 (1998): 763-95. Ellen van Oost “Materialized Gender: How Shavers Configure the Users’ Femininity and Masculinity,” Malein: suadaPinch and Oudshoorn, Eds., How Users Matter (MIT Press, 2003): 193-208. 2:Quis Infrastructure Dolor and innovation ThomasSet Ipsum P. Hughes, “The Evolution of Large Technological Systems,” in Wiebe E Bijker, Thomas Parke Hughes, and T. J Pinch, eds., The Social Construction of Technological Systems (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987): 51–82. NALYTICAL PPROACHES Paul David, “Clio and the Economics of QWERTY,” The American Economic Review 75 (1985): A A 332-337. Excerpt from Susan Leigh Star, “Power, technology, and the phenomenology of conventions: on being allergic to onions,” Sociological Review (1990): 25-56. Read pp. 34-36 only. Consider a piece of technology that you use in your everyday life. What do you know about how it got its Q current shape and capabilities? What uses does it invite, and which users does it exclude? How could it have . been developed differently? 2 1: Where did the internet come from? Corporations and government Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think,” The Atlantic July 1 1945. Gordon Moore, “The Future of Integrated Electronics,” in David C. Brock, ed., Understanding Moore’s Law: Four Decades of Innovation (Philadelphia: CHF Press, 2006), 37–54. Paul Edwards. “From ‘Impact’ to Social Process: Computers in Society and Culture.” In Sheila Jasanoff et al, eds., Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (MIT Press, 1994), 257-286. Read 257-268 only. NTERNET 2: Where did the Internet come from? The hippies and “the commons” I Fred Turner, “Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy: WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community.” Technology and Culture 46 (2005): 485-512. HE Dariusz Jemielniak. “Conflict Resolution on Wikipedia: Why Die for Danzig?” Chapter 2 in Common T Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia (Stanford University Press, 2014) pp. 59-84. Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162, no. 3859 (13 December 1968): 1243– 1248. The development of the Internet involved different Relevant Social Groups – corporations, government, and anti-establishmentarians – with their own values, practices, and ideals. What are the main benefits and Q. drawbacks of each approach? [3] 3 & 1: Crafting large scale systems: industries and governments (David Reinecke) James A. Swaney, “Market Versus Command and Control Environmental Policies,” Journal of Economic Issues 26 (1992): 623–633. 2: Why governments build nuclear weapons and what happens when they get them (Alex Bolfrass) Scott D. Sagan, "Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?: Three Models in Search of a Bomb,” International Security, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Winter, 1996-1997), pp. 54-86. OVERNMENT [AUDIO] Eric Schlosser interview on NPR’s Fresh Air (August 13, 2014). EGULATION EGULATION G R Consider your cell phone plan. What is covered by it, what isn’t, and what would you like to be covered? How Q. do you think the company makes its decisions about pricing? Would regulation help the situation or4 not? 1. Patenting what? Bryn William-Jones, “History of a Gene Patent: Tracing the Development and Application of Commercial BRCA Testing,” Health Law Review (2002): 123–146. Greif Karen and Jon Merz, “Who Owns Life” and “The Canavan Disease Patient Case,” in Current Controversies in the biological sciences (2007): 65-76. Adam Liptak, “Justices, 9–0, Bar Patenting Human Genes” in New York Times (13 June 2013). George Poste, “The Case for Genomic Patenting,” Nature 378 (7 December 1995): 534–536.
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