Culture, Art and Technology (CAT) 2 WINTER The Arts of Science Fiction are Attempts to Culturally Adapt to Technological Change

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1 Culture, Art and Technology (CAT) 2 WINTER 2009 The Arts of Science Fiction are Attempts to Culturally Adapt to Technological Change Room: PCYNH 106 Time: TuTh 5:00pm-6:20pm Instructor: Peter John Office: PCH Rm pjohn@ucsd.edu Office hrs: tba TA(s): (name(s), office, contact, office hours: TBA In this course we will be using science fiction films, short stories, and novels, to probe and question our familiar equation of technology and progress. We will begin by considering the quality of human life before, during, and after the Industrial Revolution. We will then explore the hypothesis that, as a result of our increasingly mechanized cultures, we have subjected ourselves to an autonomous technology (L. Winner) and with it, to a mechanical measure of the nature and quality of human existence (Adas). You will be asked to design a project (specifically, a work of science fiction) in concert with your fellow students to explore the relation of technology to the quality of human experience, in the present and anticipated future. Required Texts: Frankenstein (Shelley) Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury) 1984 (Orwell) Controlling Technology

2 Required readings on WebCt: The Machine Stops (E. M. Forster) Dining with Robots (Ellen Ullman) Why the Future Doesn t Need Us (Bill Joy) On science fiction Suggested Reading: Daniel Quinn, Ishmael Joe Haldeman, The Forever War Kim Stanley Robinson, Mars Trilogy Slack/Wise, Culture and Technology Crimethinc, Days of War, Nights of Love Essay One: 2-3 pages (10%): paraphrase Shelley s thesis concerning discovery and invention, as expressed in the characters and dialogues of Captain Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and Frankenstein s Monster. (Due end of week 2). Essay Two (20%): Building on your first essay, compose a thesis on the ambiguous consequences of technological change. Your essay should combine three different bodies of evidence and example: 1) The films and novels central to the course; 2) a healthy cross-section of the philosophical discourse presented in Controlling Technology; and 3) historical evidence and example presented in lecture; specifically, with respect to this third body of evidence, your essay should take into account evidence discussed in lecture of technological and social changes in Europe between 1780 and 1918, that is, approximately between the onset of the Industrial Revolution and the end of the First World War. To the degree that these subjects are not clear to you, you are encouraged to ask questions in lecture and to do further reading using the resource of encyclopedias or textbooks. (5-6 pages; due beginning of week 5)

3 Essay Three (20%): Compose a thesis addressing the issue of adjusting human behavior to suit technological change, both hard technology (e.g., machines) and soft (e.g., laws, ideologies, belief systems). Your essay should integrate the texts by Bradbury and Orwell, along with a healthy cross-section of the essays in Controlling Technology (5-6 pp; due 7th week). Project (30%): working individually or in small groups (2-4 people) create your own science fiction, one that explores the relation between the world you now inhabit and a possible future. (Due 10 th week) Participation 10% Final (10%): Explain and justify the creative choices you made in your project, and connect them to the general themes of the course. PART ONE: Controlling Technology Week 1: Controlling or Controlled? Lecture 1: Prelude: THX 1138 Science Fiction and the arts of adaptation (McCluhan) Storytelling and adaptation (Dissanayake revisited) Frankenstein as allegory Lecture 2: From Prometheus to Frankenstein: antecedents to our modern concern about invention, control and the quality of life. (Prometheus, Daedalus/Icarus, Adam and Eden, Job, Oedipus, Faust)

4 Week 2: Frankenstein and the Industrial Revolutions Lecture One: Modernization, for better or worse On the Cusp of Modernity: Le Retour de Martin Guerre The Industrial Revolution and the Implications of the Sadler Report (alienation, hegemony, exploitation). The Machine in the Garden (Leo Marx) Pandemonium (Coleridge, Wordsworth) Lecture Two: 19 th century Utopias and Prophecies (Fourier, Saint- Simon, Marx, Shakers; Luddites) Week 3: Seduction and the Technological Sublime: Lecture One: Technoeuphoria: from the Crystal Palace to the fin de siecle. David Nye on the technological sublime Delacroix vs. de Musset Arts and Crafts; Art Nouveau; Art Deco Lecture Two: Controlling Technology: theses, counter arguments. Week 4: Loosing Control Lecture One: Total War and the Autonomy of Technology Civil War World War One (Jay Winter, Otto Dix, Ernst Junger) The Machine Stops Dada; Ur-Sonata

5 Lecture Two: Controlling Technology: theses and counterarguments; on the ambiguous meaning of the phrase autonomous technology. PART TWO: Controlled by Technology Week 5: Subjugation Lecture One: Metropolis and the mechanization of everyday life (Lang; Simmel; Nietzsche) The Soul of Man Under Capitalism (Wilde) Lecture Two: Human as other? Machines as the Measure of Man (Adas) Ergonomics (Taylor) Frenetic Pace of Everyday Life ( John Henry ) Titanic as Metaphor (Kern; Leadbelly) Lilith (Kiefer) Week 6: Assimilation 451 Surveillance, Goffman Panopticon, 1984

6 Week 7: Elimination Lecture One: 2001: A Space Odyssey Bladerunner IRobot Aliens Terminator Soylent Green Lecture Two: THX revisited: Brave New World Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Goffman) Surveillance AI, soft and hard (Dreyfus, Searle, Fodor, Kurzweil, Pinker) Bill Joy, Why the Future Doesn t Need Us Ellen Ullman, Dining with Robots The Rapture of the Geeks? Part Three: week 8-10: Complete and present your project Optional Lectures: Vonnegut on narrative structure On the Structure of science fiction (guest lecture) On McCluhan, taking it on the chin, and surgery without any anaesthetic.

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