FYS 11 Social Difference and the Politics of Technology
"Technology" is often thought of as being neutral and at its best providing solutions to problems without human bias. Despite this, contemporary developments in predictive policing and algorithmic racism, to give only two prominent examples, suggest that this is not the case. In Social Difference and the Politics of Technology we will discuss contemporary issues like AI, automation, and environmental technologies, and a longer history of technology dating to plantation slavery and European colonialism. The course will ask students to think about the ways that technological development has never been neutral and has always been connected to histories of race, gender, sexuality, and hierarchical conceptions of what it means to be human, as well as economics and labor, and ecological issues. In doing so we will look at a wide array of texts and media to examine these histories, to imagine worlds otherwise to them, and as a foundation for developing writing skills in order to ethically engage with technological change on an increasingly unequal and unstable planet. Open only to first-year frosh.