Technological Society
Full course description
In this course, you will explore and analyse what it means to live in a technological society. You will learn that technological development is not just about technology, but is deeply intertwined with social and cultural questions. In particular, you will study how technology and society have been intertwined since World War Two. While technology has always been an intricate part of any society, in the second half of the 20th century technological change became a defining characteristic of the way societal structures, media and art are constituted and organized. In this course, you will investigate and unravel this distinctive condition.
The central idea of this course is that many current societal issues build on, resonate and reflect issues in the past. You will study five different areas in which questions about technology’s role in society are central: security, mass media, environment, health and work. Taking its starting point in current challenges related to these five areas, you will seek to contextualise them in relation to parallel developments in the period 1950-2000, and to apply theoretical concepts that help you to analyse the relationship between technology and society.
Course objectives
- You will learn to recognise and articulate contemporary challenges of technology in society, in particular in the areas of security, mass media, environmental pressures, health and work & consumption
- You will learn how to productively draw parallels between the current societal issues and developments and imaginations in the past
- You will learn to recognise and apply analytical perspectives to analyse the entanglement of technology, media, and politics in our contemporary society.
- You will be able to make a reasoned contribution to academic and societal debates on the role of technology in society
Recommended reading
See course book.