• Some definitions
• Some questions
  • Does every society have ‘technology?’
  • Does technology affect human perceptions of time, nature, the ‘world/universe’ (or now, the ‘multiverse‘), space, distance, the supernatural, the human body (and physical health, mental states, birth, death, sickness), culture, language, society, work . . . . ?
  • Are societies reflections of their prevailing technologies?
  • Are some technologies ‘superior’ to others?
• Is technology an artifact of modernity?
• Prehistory and early history
• Inventions that changed humanity’s trajectory
• Technology as uniquely human?
  • Chimpanzees (nuts, termites, )
  • Monkeys (Capuchins, macaques)
• Agricultural revolution, timeline (Guns, Germs & Steel)
• Industrial revolution (and European colonialism), part 1
  • coal and steam (energy)
  • transportation, manufacturing (think POET model)
• Post WWII
  • Industrial revolution, part 2 (petroleum)
    • Readings: Jackson (suburbanization, racial segregation … ENERGY)
    • Schwartz-Cowan (technology, gender … electrically)
    • Cars and roads (and invention and necessity)
    • Hans Rosling’s perspective (on living standards)
    • Atmospheric CO2
    • Agriculture–productivity, fossil fuel subsidies, and the future

Technology, culture and change

• Thinking about change
  • Printing and knowledge
  • Values
    • can be embedded in invention (size, scale, profit potential, speed, convenience, debt, conflict …)
      • Celilo Falls
      • Three Gorges Dam
      • Nuclear warfare (and testing, and how it was sold to Americans)
    • when ‘diffused’–part of technology transfer (cultural ‘baggage’)
      • Northern Finland: Sami culture and snowmobiles
      • Kariba Dam
      • China’s trillion dollar infrastructure strategy
    • Intermediate (appropriate) technology

Sociotechnical systems

• skyscraper, dam, farming, hospital
• Technology and ‘linear systems‘
• and democratic process (facebook and Cambridge Analytica)
  • ‘weaponizing’ information
  • Familiar with the Big 5 score?

The technological monoculture (agriculture)

• Thought re-visit: What technological innovations represent watershed moments in history (and . . . what kind of moments?)?

Technology and consumption

• How resources and technology interact
  • Resource process
  • Story of Stuff
  • Story of Solutions

Alternatives

• Appropriate technology (E.F. Schumacher)
• Renewables
• Biomimicry–learning from nature
• Smart growth (grasp the key principles)
• from Project Drawdown (of our carbon footprints)