Not offered 2007-2008
SOC 368 Technology and Modern Society
With expanding access to and use of the internet, controversial developments in such biotechnical practices as the cloning of mammals, rapid advances in various forms of
telecommunication, and the increasing sophistication of technological weaponry in the
military, the triumph of technology remains a defining feature of modern life. For the most
part, modern humans remain unflinchingly confident in the possibilities technology holds for
continuing to improve the human condition. Indisputably, technology has benefited human
life in innumerable ways. However, as with other features of modernity, technology has also
had significant, albeit largely unanticipated, social consequences. Working within a
sociological paradigm, this course will focus on the less often examined latent functions of
technology in modern society. It will consider, for example, the social effects of technology
on community life, on privacy, and on how people learn, think, understand the world,
communicate, and organize themselves. The course will also examine the effects of
technology on medicine, business, education, and the military and will consider such
countercultural reactions to technology as the Luddite movement in early-nineteenth-century
England and the U.S. agrarian movements of the twentieth century.
Requirements: two short papers, a midterm exam, and a final exam.
No prerequisites.
NOLAN