1. Utopias and Dystopias Technology’s Hopes and Fears

2. Overview of last modules Module 4: technology and social relations, including cultural practices and modes of relating to technology Module 5: technology and social spaces, including public/private spaces, virtual space and conceptual spaces such as “public sphere”

3. This Module Psychological dimensions of technologies Metaphysical dimensions Experiential dimensions The effects on the “self”

4. Collective Imaginary A vision all members of a community understand and share Creates a sense of belonging and strengthens relations (imaginary constitutes community) Example: the role of collective imaginary in the formation and relations of a nation

5. Virtual Imaginary Collective imagination of cyberspace Two extremes of relations to technology: Utopian and dystopian visions Importance of virtual imaginary: key to the constitution of communities of interest

6. Themes in Visions of Heaven and Hell Body and its relations to machines Intelligence in relation to technology Social relations mediated by cyberpower, e.g. cyber democracy, surveillance Physiological, social, environmental impacts of technology

7. Questions Feeding the Debates Can everything be reduced to information (digitized)? Does life have to be organic (e.g. are ‘bots’ alive)? Does intelligence have to be dependent on organic matter (e.g. can we download our intelligence into a harddrive)? What role should we give cyber technology in mediating social relations such as governance? What are the boundaries of public/private? What are the relations between physical and non- physical (virtual)?

8. Critique Technological determinism is inherent in both utopian and dystopian visions of technology. By making technology the cause of our fears or the source of our hopes, we fail to assume responsibility and agency.

9. Visual Material Metropolis (Fritz Lang) Blade Runner (Ridley Scott) Lost in Space (Stephen Hopkins) The Middleton Family at the New York’s World Fair http :// www2.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/middleton/index.html

10. Notable Themes Towering and imposing architectural monstrosities (all three) and super-large and invasive media Machines and human creations enabled with human characteristics (physical and intellectual), such as robots (Metropolis), replicants (Blade Runner), machine-enhanced humans (Lost in Space) Environmental and/or degradation (all three) Humans as slaves to machinery (Metropolis) or machines as slave to humans (Blade Runner) Disasters and social ills (all three) Developing more and “better” technology to rectify the ills or to colonize new spaces