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MIT 432F (Fall 2005)   The Mechanical Flower: Nurturing Technological Myths from the 19th to the 21st Century

Course Description
Steel petals open, a new culture of technology rises. Technological roots dig below the skin of the earth to create a rhizome of connectedness that will transplant our world from the bio- to the technosphere. This course examines our persistent anxiety and exhilaration about technology as a force that can both save and destroy us, spiritually, emotionally, physically. Our technological culture fosters certain kinds of reassuring images that are diagnostic of anxious responses to a baffling mechanical environment. In order to assuage our uneasiness about the technosphere, our cultural narratives depict machines that are relatively simple to comprehend and easy to master; other narratives counter machine myths, creating panic in the mechanical hothouse. Looking out over new Arcadia we see calm rows of mechanical flowers nodding in the electric breeze.

This course is no longer active. Please contact FIMS Undergraduate Student Services, fims@uwo.ca, for more information.



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