1. ENGR 101/HUM 200 Technology and Society October 5, 2005

2. Agenda Questions from yesterday “Make It Better” assignment Your topic preferences/constraints (turn in index card at end of class) Speculative Fiction (aka sci-fi!), Possible Futures, and the People Who Build Stuff

3. “Make It Better” If you want to arrange yourselves into a group, please do so. Write group member names down on card and turn in today. Otherwise, write down up to three general subjects/technologies in which you are interested AND any schedule constraints you may have (i.e. can’t meet after 5 pm any day) and turn in today.

4. Why Sci-Fi? Themes from The Diamond Age –Transportation (pedomotive, blades) –Energy (The Feed) –Information dissemination (electronic media; ractives, books!) –Social structures (claves)

7. Why Sci-Fi? Themes from The Diamond Age –Transportation (pedomotive, blades) –Energy (The Feed) –Information dissemination (electronic media; ractives, books!) –Social structures (claves)

8. Why Not Sci-Fi? Themes from “The Machine Stops” –Transportation –Energy (power plant in France; centralized and distant) –Information Dissemination (lectures, music, The Book) –Social structures (mediated interaction, erasure of family structures, economics, individual choice)

9. “The Machine Stops” http://www.tcnj.edu/~casa3/machine_inde x.htmlhttp://www.tcnj.edu/~casa3/machine_inde x.html

10. Possible Futures Some predictions have been a little better than others

11. Visionary Transportation Why don’t we have flying cars? We were promised flying cars!

12. Transportation in The Diamond Age Blades Pedomotive Airships

13. Robotics And robots! We were promised robots!

14. And Interplanetary Politics…

15. And What About Intergalactic Travel?

16. Sci-Fi As Snapshot of Culture

18. Next class Read “The Engineering Disciplines” (short) Read Donald Norman, from The Design of Everyday Things (not short, but interesting!) Assignment into “Make It Better” groups