Technology of Tomorrow (Mgt 274A 01)
Introduction This course is about the technological environment we will face in the next 20 years and its implications for business, politics, ethics, health, happiness, and everyday life. We will focus less on Technology than Tomorrow, while recognizing that the one confirms and conditions the other. We view technology as the application of science and engineering to the universe of practical affairs –the totality of tools with which we live our lives and conduct our business, and the virtual stage on which we perform and produce. Technology is the Great Facilitator. Given our dependence on the tools of life, it follows that how they will change and transform the space around us should be of utmost concern to us all, especially to young people embarking on the time of their greatest productivity and invention, building careers within, and for a world dominated by technology. The course objective is to prepare students for adaptation to what’s coming through creative exploration of the great what if of technology’s future trajectory. We will take aim primarily at the near yet still unknown future of the 2020’s, a period likely to be as pivotal and accelerating technologically as the 1920’s were culturally, artistically, and socially. Culture, art, and social interaction, of course, are not divorced from technology, but intertwined with it and ignited by it. Consider the instrumental role that automobiles, movies, radios, chemicals, and telephones played in the 1920’s, the growing impact these technologies had on daily life then, and the mutually reinforcing relation they enjoyed with development of electrification, urbanization, mass production, broadcasting, mass circulation, highways, indoor plumbing, sewage systems, and communication networks. What novel symbioses await us in the present century? And what novel disasters? All was not bliss in the roaring twenties. Incipient economic and institutional problems brought about the Great Depression, and health care left much to be desired. Doctors at the bedside with homespun remedies were no match for later drugs curing disease and therapies alleviating chronic conditions. Nutritional deficiencies resulting in rickets, hookworm, and pellagra went untreated in many regions of the country. Even the brilliant, if fortuitous discovery of penicillin in Alexander Fleming’s laboratory in 1928 passed by largely unnoticed until the 1940’s when wartime demand for antibacterial agents began to soar. Soon, doctors would be using antibiotics derived from microorganisms. Infant mortality was already declining, life expectancies were climbing, and the Pap smear, electrocardiograph, iron-lung respirator, and electroencephalograph were making their appearance. Such was the texture of life in the 1920’s.
Content of the Course There are intriguing parallels between the 1920’s and today. One is the exponential growth in shortwave communications starting about 1927 that foreshadowed exploding use of the Internet over the past two decades. A related advance was the transition of long-distance communications from transoceanic cables and long-wave wireless to transoceanic shortwave. Application areas to be highlighted in this new course include medicine, communications, and information systems. Student projects will touch on nanotechnology, global warming, alternative energy sources, driverless highways, zero-emission automobiles, gene-guided diagnosis, personalized medicine, genetic engineering, oil-free economies, and more. We will consider global economic forces, spreading ecological phenomena, and dramatically changing demographics, as in the recent forecast that one in seven people living in the United States will be foreign born by 2020. We will devote special attention to the unexpected effects of technology and its possible long-term consequences. We know that Henry Ford was not thinking about air pollution, automobile congestion, traffic fatalities, and the economic decay of Detroit when designing his assembly line. He was focused on ridding the streets of horse droppings and seeing to it that ever-greater numbers of people would be able to enjoy drives in the country. Problems introduced by technology are an important part of the planning equation. Positively viewed, they present a steady stream of new challenges and recurring opportunities for business, government, and political action. The class will design its own case study recounting the history of computers, the Internet, and the World Wide Web, based partly on an authoritative well-written book by John Naughton – Brief History of the Future: The Origins of the Internet. This is our text. We will use it to take our case study to the end of the 1990’s, then move the clock forward to the present time through discussion and further readings. The few references below are from an extensive bibliography compiled in planning the course, available to students as an aide. Also indicated are useful online resources and an open-ended list of topics for term projects. To assist you, a conceptual framework will be developed to help in making predictions on technological up-and-comers, radical departures, and even pure fantasy. There will be assigned readings, at-home quizzes, and discussions weekly, and a term project due at the end of the quarter. Grades will be based on understanding of the subject matter, self-constructed visions of the future, imagination, creative powers, and critical sense. The breakdown will be: quizzes (25%), participation (10%), class discussion (15%), and term project (50%).
Topic Ideas for Student Projects (open-ended) Revealing Parallels with the Roaring Twenties Whatever Happened to Attention Scarcity and Information Overload? The World Wide Web Makes Good on Vannevar Bush’s Memex The Glorious Future of Google and Wikipedia Reversing Global Warming Renewable Energy and Automotive Efficiency Driverless Highways Stem Cells Advancing to the Clinic Individualized Medicine, Dentistry, Diagnosis, and Treatment Every-Person’s Genome for Under $1,000 a Set Touring Space Colonizing the Galaxy Removing Death and Suffering from Pancreatic Cancer and Other Deadly Diseases Living Better, Living Longer, Living Forever Partial List of Readings and Online Resources Vannevar Bush, As We May Think, The Atlantic Monthly, July 1945 Martin Greenberger, The Computers of Tomorrow, Atlantic Monthly, 1964 Martin Greenberger, ed., Management and the Computer of the Future, MIT Press, 1962 Katie Hafner, Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet, 1996 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited, 1932et al. Michio Kaku, Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century and Beyond, 1999 Ray Kurzweil, Terry Grossman, Fantastic Voyage, Live Long Enough to Live Forever, 2004 *John Naughton, Brief History of the Future: Origins of the Internet, Overlook Press, 2000 M. Mitchell Waldrop, The Dream Machine, Licklider & Personal Computing Revolution, 2001 A Brief History of the Future, http://www.briefhistory.com/da Google, http://www.google.com/ Kevin Kelly, http://www.kk.org/ KurzweilAI.net Weekly Newsletter, news-admin@kurzweilai.net MIT Technology Review, http://www.technologyreview.com Wikipedia. http://wikipedia.org/ Wired, http://www.wired.com
Content of the Course There are intriguing parallels between the 1920’s and today. One is the exponential growth in shortwave communications starting about 1927 that foreshadowed exploding use of the Internet over the past two decades. A related advance was the transition of long-distance communications from transoceanic cables and long-wave wireless to transoceanic shortwave. Application areas to be highlighted in this new course include medicine, communications, and information systems. Student projects will touch on nanotechnology, global warming, alternative energy sources, driverless highways, zero-emission automobiles, gene-guided diagnosis, personalized medicine, genetic engineering, oil-free economies, and more. We will consider global economic forces, spreading ecological phenomena, and dramatically changing demographics, as in the recent forecast that one in seven people living in the United States will be foreign born by 2020. We will devote special attention to the unexpected effects of technology and its possible long-term consequences. We know that Henry Ford was not thinking about air pollution, automobile congestion, traffic fatalities, and the economic decay of Detroit when designing his assembly line. He was focused on ridding the streets of horse droppings and seeing to it that ever-greater numbers of people would be able to enjoy drives in the country. Problems introduced by technology are an important part of the planning equation. Positively viewed, they present a steady stream of new challenges and recurring opportunities for business, government, and political action. The class will design its own case study recounting the history of computers, the Internet, and the World Wide Web, based partly on an authoritative well-written book by John Naughton – Brief History of the Future: The Origins of the Internet. This is our text. We will use it to take our case study to the end of the 1990’s, then move the clock forward to the present time through discussion and further readings. The few references below are from an extensive bibliography compiled in planning the course, available to students as an aide. Also indicated are useful online resources and an open-ended list of topics for term projects. To assist you, a conceptual framework will be developed to help in making predictions on technological up-and-comers, radical departures, and even pure fantasy. There will be assigned readings, at-home quizzes, and discussions weekly, and a term project due at the end of the quarter. Grades will be based on understanding of the subject matter, self-constructed visions of the future, imagination, creative powers, and critical sense. The breakdown will be: quizzes (25%), participation (10%), class discussion (15%), and term project (50%).
Topic Ideas for Student Projects (open-ended) Revealing Parallels with the Roaring Twenties Whatever Happened to Attention Scarcity and Information Overload? The World Wide Web Makes Good on Vannevar Bush’s Memex The Glorious Future of Google and Wikipedia Reversing Global Warming Renewable Energy and Automotive Efficiency Driverless Highways Stem Cells Advancing to the Clinic Individualized Medicine, Dentistry, Diagnosis, and Treatment Every-Person’s Genome for Under $1,000 a Set Touring Space Colonizing the Galaxy Removing Death and Suffering from Pancreatic Cancer and Other Deadly Diseases Living Better, Living Longer, Living Forever Partial List of Readings and Online Resources Vannevar Bush, As We May Think, The Atlantic Monthly, July 1945 Martin Greenberger, The Computers of Tomorrow, Atlantic Monthly, 1964 Martin Greenberger, ed., Management and the Computer of the Future, MIT Press, 1962 Katie Hafner, Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet, 1996 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited, 1932et al. Michio Kaku, Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century and Beyond, 1999 Ray Kurzweil, Terry Grossman, Fantastic Voyage, Live Long Enough to Live Forever, 2004 *John Naughton, Brief History of the Future: Origins of the Internet, Overlook Press, 2000 M. Mitchell Waldrop, The Dream Machine, Licklider & Personal Computing Revolution, 2001 A Brief History of the Future, http://www.briefhistory.com/da Google, http://www.google.com/ Kevin Kelly, http://www.kk.org/ KurzweilAI.net Weekly Newsletter, news-admin@kurzweilai.net MIT Technology Review, http://www.technologyreview.com Wikipedia. http://wikipedia.org/ Wired, http://www.wired.com
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