As communication technologies' forms continue to morph, the relationship between a machined aesthetics and a sense of who we are in the world takes on increasing socio-political importance. The principal goal of "Thinking Technology" is to foster critical insight into our rapidly changing relationship with these machines which are increasingly a pivot upon which popular culture and its performances "turn." Students may expect to achieve a greater understanding of the cultural complexities that flow from and contribute to rapid change in the form, deployment, and experience of information and communication technologies.

What do we mean by technology today? And what historically and perceptually contingent relationships are produced and performed at the intersections among technology, nature, social contexts, and an array of human needs to make meaning of and from the lived world around us? In considering these questions, the seminar focuses on three broad sites of enquiry.

1. Examining earlier theorists of technology and communication who span a range from "technopessimist" to "technotopian."

3. Given these histories, discussing how communication technologies organize cultural discourses and how they are operationalized as both form and content of popular culture.

*