Information Technology, Science and Society.

SMEC-626 online

Information Technology, Science and Society

Curtin University
Lecturer: Steve Kessell

This unit asks some BIG questions:

• What is "science"?
• Where did it come from, and where is it going?
• How does science change and grow?
• Can anything be "proved"?
• How do we know what we know?
• Are there different ways of "knowing"?
• What does it mean "to measure",
  "to classify"?
• Are these systems objective?
• What, really, is "time"?
• Is science "objective"?
• Can we "know" that?
• Who controls science, research, technology, "progress" and their impacts?
• Where are science and technology going?
• What will the world look like in nnn years?
• What problems have technology caused -- dependence, loss of privacy, indefinite life support, environmental havoc, ability to destroy the world, 10 percent of the world's population utilising 90 percent of its resources?
• Is there a solution?
• Is it "technological"?
• What other moral, ethical and/or legal issues emerge?
• Whose responsibility?
• Who decides?