2015: The World Unbound

Science

Liberating Technologies

  1. Questions to Consider

    • How is a technology different from a tool, if at all?
    • Are all technologies liberating technologies?
    • Are there examples of technologies that do more to oppress than to liberate us?
    • Do technologies come attached to ideologies?
    • Do users need to understand the technologies they use?
    • What are the implications of the Internet for “liberation movements”?
    • Are governments able to suppress liberating technologies?
    • Do people ever willingly buy technologies that reduce their own freedom? Have you?
    • Do women and girls face extra barriers in their access to technology?
    • Would cheap renewable energy be the ultimate liberating technology?
    • Have Wikipedia and other online sources freed us from the elite management of knowledge?
  1. Denying the Limits of Nature

    • Freedom from Death & Disease: Vaccination, Antibiotics, and Sanitation
    • So What if You Were Born That Way?: Transforming the Mind and Body
    • The Walking Alive: Prosthetics & New Techniques for Defeating Paralysis
    • Seeing What Goes Bump: The Power of the Electric Light
    • To Baby or Not to Baby: The Impact of Reproductive Technology
    • Learning from Dracula: Immortality and the Science (?) of Transhumanism
    • The Lazarus Effect: Pushing the Frontiers of Resuscitation
  1. Defying the Limits of Society

    • Read All About It: The Early Legacy of the Printing Press
    • Machine Wash Only: Household Technologies and Women’s Liberation
    • You Can Get There From Here: The Impact of the Train and Automobile
    • The Tweet Heard Around the World: Social Media and Social Upheaval
    • Learning.com: The Internet and the Open Education Movement
    • The Pocket Veto: Mobile Technology and Democratic Development
  1. Additional Questions & Cases to Discuss (Examples)