Technology and Culture

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Syllabus

Course Description

This course examines relationships among technology, culture, and politics in a variety of social and historical settings ranging from 19th century factories to 21st century techno dance floors, from colonial Melanesia to capitalist Massachusetts. We organize our discussions around three questions: What cultural effects and risks follow from treating biology as technology? How have computers changed the way we think about ourselves? How are politics built into our infrastructures? We will be interested in whether technology has produced a better world, and for whom.

Requirements and Grading

Students will write three 5-7 page papers (see below). Each represents 30% of the subject grade. No emailed papers accepted. Papers correspond to three thematic sections of the syllabus and will integrate class readings with a topic of each student's choosing. Students will also be evaluated on class participation, including discussion and in-class writing exercises (10% of subject grade). Punctual attendance is obligatory. There is no final.

Course Meeting Times Lectures: 1 session / week, 3 hours / session

Grading Percentages

Paper 1: Biology and Biotechnology Paper 30% Paper 2: Computers and Information Technologies Paper 30% Paper 3: Technological Infrastructure and Social Forms Paper 30% Class Participation 10%

Required Texts

  • Rapp, Rayna. Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: A Social History of Amniocentesis in America. New York, NY: Routledge, 2000. ISBN: 0415916453.
  • Petryna, Adriana. Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. ISBN: 069109019X.
  • Latour, Bruno. Aramis, or The Love of Technology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. ISBN: 0674043235.

Calendar

LEC # TOPICS KEY DATES

Introductory Themes

  • 1 Introduction
  • 2 Theories of Technology and Culture

Theme 1: Biology and Biotechnology

  • 3 Technologies of Sex and Gender: Reproduction, Birth, Risk
  • 4 Technologies of Race: Medical Experimentation
  • 5 Technologies of Death: Risk and the Biopolitics of Radiation
  • 6 Genetically Modified Food Paper 1 due

Theme 2: Computers and Information Technologies

  • 7 Sociologies of Computing
  • 8 From Artificial Intelligence to Artificial Life
  • 9 Our Machines, Our Music: From White Noise to Black Noise

Theme 3: Technological Infrastructure and Social Forms

  • 10 Infrastructure Paper 2 due
  • 11 Trains, Automobiles, Organs
  • 12 Student Paper Presentations
  • 13 Party and Student Paper Presentations Paper 3 due

Readings

This section features not only the required readings, but also the films shown in class.

LEC # TOPICS FILMS READINGS Introductory Themes 1 Introduction (no films) (no readings)

2 Theories of Technology and Culture Film Excerpt: The Matrix

  • Malinowski, Bronislaw. Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1992 [1948], pp. 17-35. ISBN: 0881336572.
  • Gusterson, Hugh. "Nuclear Weapons Testing: Scientific Experiment as Political Ritual." In Naked Science: Anthropological Inquiry into Boundaries, Power, and Knowledge. Edited by Laura Nader. New York, NY: Routledge, 1996, pp. 131-147. ISBN: 0415914655.
  • Marx, Karl. "The Fetishism of the Commodity and Its Secret." In Capital, Volume 1. Translated from the German by Ben *Fowkes. London, UK: Penguin, 1976 [1867], pp. 163-177. ISBN: 0140445684.

Theme 1: Biology and Biotechnology 3 Technologies of Sex and Gender: Reproduction, Birth, Risk (no films)

  • Martin, Emily. "Pregnancy, Labor and Body Image in the United States." Social Science and Medicine 19, no. 11 (1984): 1201-1206.
  • Rapp, Rayna. Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: A Social History of Amniocentesis in America. New York, NY: Routledge, 2000. ISBN: 0415916453. Skip chapters 8 and 10.

4 Technologies of Race: Medical Experimentation Documentary: The Deadly Deception

  • Kapsalis, Terri. "Mastering the Female Pelvis: Race and the Tools of Reproduction." In Public Privates: Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997, pp. 31-59. ISBN: 0822319217.
  • Jones, James. "The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment: 'A Moral Astigmatism.'" In The "Racial" Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future. Edited by Sandra Harding. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993, pp. 275-286. ISBN: 0253208106.
  • Landecker, Hannah. "Immortality, In Vitro: A History of the HeLa Cell Line." In Biotechnology and Culture: Bodies, Anxieties, Ethics. Edited by Paul Brodwin. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000, pp. 53-72. ISBN: 0253214289.

5 Technologies of Death: Risk and the Biopolitics of Radiation

  • Documentary: Half Life Petryna, Adriana. Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. ISBN: 069109019X.

6 Genetically Modified Food Documentary: The Future of Food Massey, Adrianne. "Crops, Genes, and Evolution." Gastronomica (Summer 2001): 20-29.

  • Haraway, Donna. "Mice Into Wormholes: A Technoscience Fugue in Two Parts." In *Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©_ Meets_OncoMouse™: Feminism and Technoscience. New York, NY: *Routledge, 1997, pp. 55-63 and 79-94. ISBN: 0415912458.
  • Jasanoff, Sheila. "Unsettled Settlements and Food for Thought." In Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005, pp. 94-145. ISBN: 0691118116.
  • Stone, Glenn Davis. "A Science of the Gray: Malthus, Marx, and the Ethics of Studying Crop Biotechnology." In Embedding Ethics: Shifting Boundaries of the Anthropological Profession. Edited by Lynn Meskell and Peter Pels. Oxford, UK: Berg, 2005, pp. 197-217. ISBN: 1845200470.

Theme 2: Computers and Information Technologies 7 Sociologies of Computing Film Excerpts: Tron, War Games

  • Schaffer, Simon. "Babbage's Intelligence: Calculating Engines and the Factory System." Critical Inquiry 21, no. 1 (1994): 203-227.
  • Edwards, Paul N. "The Army and the Microworld: Computers and the Politics of Gender Identity." Signs 16, no. 1 (1990): 102-127.
  • Pfaffenberger, Bryan. "The Social Meaning of the Personal Computer: Or, Why the Personal Computer Revolution Was No Revolution." Anthropological Quarterly 61, no. 1 (1988): 39-47.
  • Chan, Anita. "Coding Free Software, Coding Free States: Free Software Legislation and the Politics of Code in Peru." Anthropological Quarterly 77, no. 3 (1998): 531-545.

8 From Artificial Intelligence to Artificial Life Film Excerpt: A.I.

  • Forsythe, Diana E. "Engineering Knowledge: The Construction of Knowledge in Artificial Intelligence." In Studying Those Who Study Us: An Anthropologist in the World of Artificial Intelligence. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001, pp. 35-58. ISBN: 0804742030.
  • Adam, Alison. Artificial Knowing: Gender and the Thinking Machine. New York, NY: Routledge, 1998, pp. 34-68. ISBN: 041512963X.
  • Helmreich, Stefan. "The Word for World Is Computer: Simulating Second Natures in Artificial Life." In Growing Explanations: Historical Perspectives on the Sciences of Complexity. Edited by Norton Wise. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004, pp. 275-300. ISBN: 0822333074.
  • Helmreich, Stefan. "Kinship in Hypertext: Transubstantiating Fatherhood and Information Flow in Artificial Life." In Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Edited by Sarah Franklin and Susan McKinnon. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001, pp. 116-143. ISBN: 0822327961.

9 Our Machines, Our Music: From White Noise to Black Noise Film Excerpts: Space is the Place, Scratch

  • Pinch, Trevo, and Frank Trocco. "Introduction," "Chapter 1: Subterranean Homesick Blues," and "Chapter 3: Shaping the Synthesizer." In Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002, pp. 1-31 and 53-69. ISBN: 0674016173.
  • Fink, Robert. "Introduction: The Culture of Repetition." In Repeating Ourselves: American Minimal Music as Cultural Practice. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005, pp. 1-22. ISBN: 0520245504.
  • Rose, Tricia. "Soul Sonic Forces: Technology, Orality, and Black Cultural Practice in Rap Music." In Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover, MA: Wesleyan University Press, 1994, pp. 62-96. ISBN: 0819562750.
  • Williams, Ben. "Black Secret Technology: Detroit Techno and the Information Age." In Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life. Edited by Alondra Nelson and Thuy Linh N. Tu with Alicia Headlam Hines. New York, NY: NYU Press, 2001, pp. 154-176. ISBN: 0814736041.

Theme 3: Technological Infrastructure and Social Forms 10 Infrastructure Film Excerpts: Modern Times, Man with a Movie Camera

  • Hughes, Thomas. "The Seamless Web: Technology, Science, Etcetera, Etcetera." Social Studies of Science 16, no. 2 (1986): 281-292.
  • Rubinstein, M. "Relations of Science, Technology, and Economics Under Capitalism, and in the Soviet Union." In Science at the Crossroads: Papers Presented to the International Congress of the History of Science and Technology held in London from June 29th to July 3rd, 1931 by the delegates of the U.S.S.R. 2nd ed. Edited by Nikolai Bukharin et al. London, UK: Frank Cass and Company, 1971 [1931].
  • Edwards, Paul. "Y2K: Millennial Reflections on Computers as Infrastructure." History & Technology 15 (1998): 7-29.
  • Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. "Introduction: Rhizome." In A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated from the French by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987 [1980], pp. 3-25. ISBN: 0816614024.

11 Trains, Automobiles, Organs (no films)

  • Latour, Bruno. Aramis, or The Love of Technology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. ISBN: 0674043235.

Jain, Sarah. "Dangerous Instrumentality": The Bystander as Subject in Automobility. Cultural Anthropology 19, no. 1 (2004): 61-94.

  • Lock, Margaret. "On Making Up the Good-as-Dead in a Utilitarian World." In Remaking Life and Death: Toward an Anthropology of the Biosciences. Edited by Sarah Franklin and Margaret Lock. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2003, pp. 165-192. ISBN: 1930618204.

12 Student Paper Presentations (no films) (no readings) 13 Party and Student Paper Presentations (no films) (no readings)

Lecture Notes

This section features lecture outlines which include background information on the authors and questions about their arguments. Please note: outlines are not available for all the lectures.

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/science-technology-and-society/sts-464-cultural-history-of-technology-spring-2005/seminar-discussions/notes_050201_1.pdf

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/science-technology-and-society/sts-464-cultural-history-of-technology-spring-2005/seminar-discussions/notes_050208_2.pdf

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/science-technology-and-society/sts-464-cultural-history-of-technology-spring-2005/seminar-discussions/notes_050215_3.pdf

LEC # TOPICS OUTLINES Introductory Themes

  • 1 Introduction
  • 2 Theories of Technology and Culture (PDF)

Theme 1: Biology and Biotechnology

  • 3 Technologies of Sex and Gender: Reproduction, Birth, Risk
  • 4 Technologies of Race: Medical Experimentation (PDF)
  • 5 Technologies of Death: Risk and the Biopolitics of Radiation (PDF)
  • 6 Genetically Modified Food

Theme 2: Computers and Information Technologies

  • 7 Sociologies of Computing (PDF)
  • 8 From Artificial Intelligence to Artificial Life
  • 9 Our Machines, Our Music: From White Noise to Black Noise (PDF)

Theme 3: Technological Infrastructure and Social Forms

  • 10 Infrastructure (PDF)
  • 11 Trains, Automobiles, Organs (PDF)
  • 12 Student Paper Presentations
  • 13 Party and Student Paper Presentations

Assignments

Students wrote three papers for the course; instructions for all three papers are included below. Also featured are examples of the preferred bibliographic format to be used for the bibliography for each of the papers.

Papers

Paper 1: Biology and Biotechnology Paper

Due in Week #6.

For this paper, you should write about a technological instrumentalization of biology, either another example of something we discussed in this thematic unit (reproduction, race, radiation, GM food) or something we did not read about (e.g. cloning, bioterrorism). You must use some of the theoretical tools offered in the readings for this section (e.g. Marx, Malinowski, Martin, Rapp, Haraway) to analyze your case. Provide a bibliography.

Paper 2: Computers and Information Technologies Paper

Due in Week #10.

For this paper, you should write about some aspect of computer and information technology, either another example of something we discussed in this thematic unit (computers and politics, artificial life, electronic music) or something we did not read about (e.g. cell phones, computer games). You must use some of the theoretical tools offered in the readings for this section (e.g. Forsythe, Helmreich, Rose) to analyze your case. Provide a bibliography.

Paper 3: Technological Infrastructure and Social Forms Paper

Due in Week #13.

For this paper, imagine a future technology and the technological infrastructure and social forms that might accompany it. You must use some of the theoretical tools offered in the readings for this section (e.g. Hughes, Edwards, Deleuze and Guattari, Latour, Lock) to think through your ideas. In other words, write a theoretically informed science fiction essay/story. Provide a bibliograpy. Be prepared to deliver a five-ish minute presentation to the class about your paper.

Bibliographic Format

Below are examples of how you should format your bibliography for each paper:

  • Hugh Gusterson. 1996. "Nuclear Weapons Testing: Scientific Experiment as Political Ritual." In Naked Science: Anthropological Inquiry into Boundaries, Power, and Knowledge . Laura Nader, ed. New York: Routledge, 131-147.
  • Massey, Adrianne. 2001. "Crops, Genes, and Evolution." Gastronomica, Summer 20-29.
  • Chan, Anita. 2003. "Coding Free Software, Coding Free States: Free Software Legislation and the Politics of Code in Peru." Anthropological Quarterly 77(3): 531-545. Online: muse.jhu.edu/journals/anthropological_quarterly/toc/anq77.3.html
  • Rubinstein, M. 1931. "Relations of Science, Technology, and Economics Under Capitalism, and in the Soviet Union." In Science at the Crossroads: Papers Presented to the International Congress of the History of Science and Technology held in London from June 29th to July 3rd, 1931 by the delegates of the U.S.S.R. Nikolai Bukharin et al, eds. London: Frank Cass and Company, second edition, 1971.


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