Description: Today, Silicon Valley often speaks in almost holy terms of its power to shape our near future into a O’etter world. This idea is not new. For almost 500 years, western society has witnessed scores of “techno-profits” who claimed that innovation would quickly lead us to utopian-like conditions. All of them failed. This class will review some of these episodes, including: Francis Bacon’s dreams for concentration camps, Thomas Jefferson’s slave-run factories, Marx’s hopes for the assembly line, race and eugenics in the 1920s, Soviet plans for a 100% automated economy, gender and AI, and Paypal’s vision of a libertarian Atlantis.
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Prerequisite(s): See the current course schedule for registration restrictions.
For up-to-date information on current course offerings and details, please refer to the Pitzer class schedule on MyCampus2 Portal .
