Technology & Society
Sociology 120A – Spring 2016
Mondays 2:00-4:50 pm – Pearlman 203
Prof. Edward J. Hackett
Office: Bernstein-Marcus Building
Email: ehackett@brandeis.edu
781.736.2131
ehackett@brandeis.edu
Office hours: T 1:00-2:00
& by appointment
Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.
Melvin Kranzberg, 1986
Technology is a powerful force. It has been hailed as a way to cure everything from world hunger
to bad breath. Some would say it made us human, and has not yet finished the job. But technological
change is not an unqualified blessing: Technologies frequently have negative effects for particular people,
at particular times, or in particular circumstances. Some negative consequences are unanticipated, some
are predictable, and some are intentional features of the design or implementation. But because
technologies are indispensable for solving problems and improving the quality of life, societies invest in
their design and development.
This course will explore the relationship between various technologies and various aspects of
society. We will continually pose four important questions. First, where do technologies come from and
why do they work as they do? Technologies are human creations, and so their forms and uses reveal the
interests and purposes of the people, institutions, and societies that build them. Second, how do
technologies shape our world? We will explore the variety of ways by which machines and techniques
become embedded in society and thereby shape institutions, interactions, and values. Third, what kind of
future do we want? Many of the articles we will read argue that certain values are essential to a just society,
which challenges us to consider which values we should hold most dear and defend. And fourth, how can
we make decisions about technologies that will get us to the future we want? Once we understand the role
of technology in society and the world we want to build, we must develop strategies for getting us from
here to there.
Much of the semester’s readings will be found in Johnson & Wetmore’s Technology and Society:
Building Our Sociotechnical Future (MIT Press, 2008). Students may not need to purchase this book as all
readings are available electronically, but it does have some additional information and introductions that
you may find useful throughout the semester. And books are a wonderful and enduring technology.
Learning Goals
If the course succeeds, by the end of the semester you will:
Understand technologies as human creations that have, in turn, helped make us who we are;
Perceive and analyze the social values and power relationships built into technologies;
Identify ways to guide or shape emerging technologies in ways that promote equity and justice;
Improve critical thinking, complex reasoning, and communication (writing, speaking) abilities.
Course Requirements
Class meetings will combine discussions that explore ideas and their implications with brief
“lectures” that explain, integrate, and present new material. In order to benefit from our classes, you will
need to prepare. Simply reading the required articles is necessary but hardly sufficient: you will also need
to think about them. To encourage reflection, please write a one-page commentary or reflection about
the course reading. These are commentaries, not summaries, and so we wish to read what you thought
about the reading, how you connect or compare it to other course ideas, current events, or other things
you have learned. We expect the papers to demonstrate your understanding of the readings by the way
you use the ideas and arguments they offer. The papers will be graded credit/no credit, must be handed
in on paper at class time, and will not be accepted late (or early, or by email or owl). Taken altogether they
are worth 30% of your course grade.
During classes we will explain, explore, extend, and integrate ideas from the readings and current
events, and so it is very important that you attend and participate. Each student will be asked to choose an
article relevant to course topics and share it with us. Class attendance and participation are worth 10% of
your course grade.
Your major academic work for the course will be to write a 12-to-15 page (typed, double-spaced)
research paper and to present an early version of the paper in class. The paper will allow you to explore in
greater depth one of the themes of the course or a case study of the relationship between a particular
technology and a particular aspect of society that interests you. This assignment has several parts:
(1) A 2- to 3-page prospectus that will include a brief description of your topic, an explanation of
how you will approach it, and the resources you will be using (10% of your course grade).
(2) A draft of the complete paper for in-class review and advice (10%);
(3) An in-class presentation of your research (10%)
(4) A final version of your paper that will be due in class (and submitted through Turnitin on
Latte) and will be worth 30% of your course grade.
You really want to write the best drafts you can because the better your work the more helpful the
feedback you will receive.
Grades will range from A+ to E, with +s and –s.
Attendance Please come to every class prepared to discuss the readings. If other activities (sports,
debate, job interviews, etc.) will interfere with your class attendance, we should talk about this during
the first week of classes.
Late Assignments
Unexcused late assignments will not be accepted, and recurrent excuses for late assignments will be
discussed in person with the professor.
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Academic Integrity
You are expected to adhere to Brandeis’s Student Code of Conduct. All work that you turn in must be
your own and must not be copied from published sources, including the Internet. Google makes it easy
for students to find material on the web and equally easy for professors to identify its source. It is not
worth the risk.
All students are responsible for reviewing and following Brandeis’s policies on academic integrity,
which may be found in Section 4 of Rights and Responsibilities from the Brandeis Student Handbook.
If you fail to meet the standards of academic integrity in any of the criteria listed on the university
policy website, sanctions will be imposed by the instructor, school, and/or dean. Academic dishonesty
includes borrowing ideas without proper citation, copying others’ work (including information posted
on the internet), and failing to turn in your own work for group projects. Please be aware that if you
follow an argument closely, even if it is not directly quoted, you must provide a citation to the
publication, including the author, date and page number. If you directly quote a source, you must use
quotation marks and provide the same sort of citation for each quoted sentence or phrase.
Students with documented disabilities who are entitled to an accommodation should discuss this with
me and present their letter of accommodation as early as possible in the semester. If you have
questions about documenting a disability or requesting an academic accommodation, please contact
Beth Rodgers-Kay in Academic Services at 736-3470 (brodgers@brandeis.edu).
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Course Calendar
“Monday,” January 20th
One-page paper due in class on the week’s readings
Opening class
Monday, February 15th
Introductions, what we’re about…aims and plans.
Presidents’ Day—no class
Monday, January 25th
Monday, February 22nd
Freeman J. Dyson, “Technology & Social Justice,” The Sun,
The Genome, & The Internet: Tools of Scientific Revolutions
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 61-74.
Bruno Latour, “Where Are the Missing Masses?”
Francis Fukuyama, “The Prolongation of Life,” Our
Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), pp. 57-71.
Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” The Whale
and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High
Technology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986),
pp. 19-39.
E.M. Forster, “The Machine Stops,” Oxford and Cambridge
Review, November 1909, pp. 83-122.
David Bromwich, “The Hi-Tech Mess of Higher
Education’ (online)
One-page paper due in class on the week’s readings
One-page paper due in class on the week’s readings
Monday, February 1st
Monday, February 29th
Interagency Working Group on Nanoscience,
Engineering, and Technology “Nanotechnology:
Shaping the World Atom by Atom,” September 1999,
Washington D.C., pp. 1-2, 8.
Judy Wajcman, “From Women and Technology to
Gendered Technoscience”
Richard Dyer, White (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp.8394.
Bill Joy, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” WIRED, Vol.
8, No. 4, April 2000, pp. 238-262.
Cynthia Cockburn, “The Material of Male Power,” Feminist
Review, 9 (1981), pp. 41-58. (online)
Robert L. Heilbroner, “Do Machines Make History?”
Technology and Culture, Volume 8, No. 3, July 1967, pp. 335345.
Rachel Weber, “Cockpit design…”
One-page paper due in class on the week’s readings
Lewis Mumford, “An Appraisal of Lewis Mumford’s
Technics and Civilization” (online)
Monday, March 7th
One-page paper due in class on the week’s readings
Monday, February 8th
Daniel Sarewitz, “Pas de Trois: Science, Technology, and
the Marketplace”
Trevor J. Pinch and Wiebe Bijker, “The Social
Construction of Facts and Artifacts” in W. Bijker, T.P.
Hughes, and T.J. Pinch (eds.), The Social Construction of
Technological Systems (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1987),
pp. 17-50.
Edward J. Woodhouse, “Nanoscience, Green Chemistry,
and the Privileged Position of Science,” in Scott Frickel
and Kelly Moore (eds.), The New Political Sociology of Science
(University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), pp. 148-179.
(online)
Thomas P. Hughes, “Technological Momentum,” in Leo
Marx and Merritt Roe Smith (eds.), Does Technology Drive
History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism
(Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1994), pp. 101-113.
Harry Collins & Trevor Pinch, “The Naked Launch:
Assigning Blame for the Challenger Explosion,” The
Golem at Large: What You Should Know about Technology (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2002) pp. 30-56.
Joel Tarr, “The City and Technology” (online)
STEPS Manifesto (online)
Add reading on wired city—Pentland
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 Paper Prospectus Due in Class for Discussion 
Monday, April 18th
Monday, March 14th
Research Presentations
Jameson M. Wetmore, “Amish Technology: Reinforcing
Values, Building Community,” IEEE’s Technology & Society
Magazine 26(2), June 2007, pp. 10-21.
 Paper Drafts Due in Class for Discussion 
Katie Shilton, “Values Levers: Building Ethics into Design”
ST&HV 38 (3): 374-397 (online)
Break! No class
Monday, April 25th
Monday, May 2nd
Kim Tallbear, Tribal Housing, Co-Design & Cultural
John Gilliom and Torin Monahan, “Everyday Resistance”
(online only)
Sovereignty
One-page paper due in class on the week’s readings
Roopali Phadke, “People’s Science in Action: The Politics
of Protest and Knowledge Brokering in India,” Society and
Natural Resources 18 (2005), pp. 363-375.
Monday, March 21st
Stellan Welin, “Reproductive Ectogenesis: The third era of
human reproduction and some moral consequences,”
Science and Engineering Ethics, Vol. 10, no. 4, October 2004,
pp. 615-626.
 Final one-page paper due in class 
 Final research paper due on a date tba
Michael Specter, “A Life of Its Own” (online only)
Synthetic Biology Ethics—selected parts
One-page paper due in class on the week’s readings
Monday, March 28th
HOLIDAY—no class
Monday, April 4
George Ritzer, “Control: Human and Nonhuman Robots,”
The McDonaldization of Society (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine
Forge Press, 2004), pp. 106-133, 269-274.
Internet of Things
Several short robotics articles from Science
One-page paper due in class on the week’s readings
Monday, April 11
Raffi Khatchadourian, “A Star in a Bottle”
Patrick McCray, “Globalization with Hardware”
Sharlissa Moore, “Envisioning the Social and Political
Dynamics…” (online)
Bill McKibben, “Power to the People” (online)
One-page paper due in class on the week’s readings
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