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\title{VTSS 160: TECHNOLOGICAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR HUMANITY}

% Technological Opportunities for Humanity
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\noindent Instructor: John McCarthy, Professor of Computer Science

\noindent Catalog Description
\noindent Technological Opportunities for Humanity

Opportunities for new technology in daily life based on present science.
Criteria for technological advances to be useful and wanted by
individuals.  Obstacles to the implementation and use of the different
kinds of technology.  Products vs. systems.  Discrepancies between
people want and use and what is thought to be good.  Technology in
fiction, especially science fiction.  Futurism. Anti-technological
attitudes and movements.  The technologies include computers,
transportation of goods and people, medicine, utilities, space travel.

	We can look at technology either from the point of view
of opportunity or from the point of view of dangers.  This course
looks at the opportunities, leaving dangers mainly for other
courses.

	At any given time, science makes possible many more
opportunities than technology and society get around to
realizing.  This is more true today than it was 100 years ago,
because the social inhibitions to many kinds of technology
have increased.

	The course has two emphases.

	First we ask what technological opportunities to improve
human life exist today.  Included in this is a discussion of
what constitutes an improvement and what makes some improvements
more important than others.  We consider transportation,
communication, what computers can do for us and many others.
We also consider how long term supplies of energy, food, etc
can be assured.

	Second we discuss the aspects of American culture,
politics and institutions today that facilitate or hinder
technological development and its application.

	The course consists of assigned readings in course notes
and other materials, discussion of the readings and discussion
of short essays written by members of the class, mostly about their
own ideas of technological opportunities.

	A larger final essay will be asked for.
\smallskip\centerline{Copyright \copyright\ 1990\ by John McCarthy}
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