Course Code: SOCI 3005
Academic Year: 2025-2026
This course looks at technology as a social construct and examines the ways technology transforms the social world and the individuals within that world. Human cultures not only make use of their technologies, they are transformed by them as new technical possibilities lead individuals and even entire peoples to adapt their life styles and choices to the technologies themselves. Today, the possibilities of instantaneous exchange of information drives technological change even faster and we often struggle to keep up with it, let alone understand the broader implications that technology has for social change. In this course we explore the economic, political and social implications of recent technologies from a number of critical perspectives. We examine the influence and effects of technology in a variety of environments including local, virtual and global communities, the workplace and the marketplace. Further, we analyze diverse issues such as the impact of technology on democratic processes, surveillance, gender, the information society and communication.