Eric M. Gurevitch (Department of the History of Science)
First-Year Seminar 58D 4 credits (Fall Term) Enrollment: Limited to 12
Do machines make life easier or more difficult? Do new technologies create jobs or destroy them? Do we lose a part of our humanity when we interact with machines, or do machines help us to understand what it means to be human? What relation—if any—do technological improvements have with economic, political, and moral improvements? These questions occupy many of us living in contemporary America. They are also questions with long histories. We are not alone. In this first-year seminar, we will explore different ways people have raised fears and expressed anxieties over technology. The seminar will not take a stance on whether technology is good or bad. Rather, we will investigate how different people across history have confronted technology and questioned its value. The seminar will encourage students to see themselves as a part of a long history of both excitement and worry over machines and technological life. Along the way, we will explore how people affiliated with Harvard—from Henry David Thoreau to Jacob Bigelow to James Bryant Conant to Lawrence Summers—struggled with machines, technology, and the society around them.