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Courses
Undergraduate Engineering Courses
APS301H1 F - Technology in Society and the Biosphere I
This course teaches future engineers to look beyond their specialized domains of expertise in order to understand how technology functions within human life, society and the biosphere. By providing this context for design and decision-making, students will be enabled to do more than achieve the desired results by also preventing or significantly reducing undesired consequences. A more preventively-oriented mode of practicing engineering will be developed in four areas of application: materials and production, energy, work and cities. The emphasis within these topics will reflect the interests of the class.
APS302H1 S - Technology in Society and the Biosphere II
This course examines the interactions between advanced technology and human life, society and the biosphere. Topics include: industrialization and the birth of rationality and technique; the computer and information revolution as symptom of a deeper socio-cultural transformation; other “post-industrial” phenomena; the transition from experience to information; technique as social force, life-milieu and system; and living with complex socio-technical systems.
(Prerequisite: APS301H1/APS203H1/APS103H1)
APS304H1 S - Preventive Engineering and Social Development
The present intellectual and professional division of labour makes it next to impossible for specialists to deal with the consequences of their decisions that fall beyond their domains of expertise, thus institutionalizing an end-of-pipe approach to the many problems created by contemporary civilization. To turn this situation around, preventive approaches have been developed that use the understanding of how technology interacts with human life, society and the biosphere to adjust decision-making in order to achieve the desired results while at the same time preventing or reducing undesired effects. These preventive approaches can transform our materials and production systems, energy systems, workplaces and urban habitats to make contemporary ways of life more economically sound, socially viable and environmentally sustainable.
(Prerequisites:APS301H1 F/ APS203H1/ APS103H1 and APS302H1 S)
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The Centre for Technology and Social Development offers a Certificate in Preventive Engineering and Social Development to studuent completed all 3 courses above
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The approach has been described in “Can the University Escape From the Labyrinth of Technology?”(Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society 2006; vol. 26, no.2)
Undergraduate Social Science Courses
SOC325Y1 - Society in the Labyrinth of Technology
Evolving contemporary ways of life on the basis of highly specialized knowledge as opposed to tradition has led society into a labyrinth of technology. It involves breaking the bonds with local cultures and ecosystems in order to re-create them around a universal science, technology, economy and ecological footprint.
(Exclusion: SOC356Y1 if taken in 2006-07 and SOC393Y1 if taken in 2007-08. Recommended Preparation: 2 years of Sociology)
Graduate Courses
JEI1901 H - Technology, Society, and the Environment I
This course develops a conceptual framework for understanding technology-society interactions and applies this to the development of preventive approaches for the engineering, management and regulation of modern technology in order to reduce the burdens imposed on society and the environment. Topics include: society as a cultural system; industrialization as a process that simultaneously transforms technology, society and the biosphere; technology as knowledge; the modern corporation; underdevelopment and technology transfer; and sustainable development.
JEI1902 H - Technology, Society, and the Environment II
This course continues the development of the conceptual framework for understanding technology-society-biosphere interactions with the advent of high technology in general and computer-based technologies in particular. Their influence on knowledge and expertise, technology and society will be examined with applications to preventive engineering. Topics include: the rationalization of intellectual work; technology as life-milieu, social force and system; and, feedback in the technological system and its response to values.
(Prerequisite: JEI1901H)