Nature & Technology
ES 480/580
We know that our practices, personal identity and social relationships are shifting in response to rapidly changing technologies. Most are exhilarated by the promises of a thoroughly interactive world, in which ubiquitous and instantaneous devices provide encyclopedic references for what we want to know. Synthetic biology, robotics, nanomaterials, genomics: these, too, beckon a new era.
Some (many?) of us are also uneasy. Too much, too fast? Is technological progress inevitable? What is being lost? Is there too much human control? What about the more-than-human world? How is nature reshaped by a technology and technological culture?
Some (many?) of us are also uneasy. Too much, too fast? Is technological progress inevitable? What is being lost? Is there too much human control? What about the more-than-human world? How is nature reshaped by a technology and technological culture?