Welcome to Centre for Society, Technology and Values
The Centre for Society, Technology and Values (CSTV) is a uniquely UWaterloo interdisciplinary centre that sets out to explain and examine social aspects of technology and technological change.
CSTV was established in 1984 as an interdisciplinary teaching and research unit. Since 1991, it has been connected with the Department of Systems Design Engineering.
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A look inSYDE CSTV
A Look inSYDE with Dr. Scott Campbell
A look inSYDE with Dr. Cameron Shelley
News
Call for Climate Adaptation Coop Research applications
Systems Design faculty members can apply for Cornfield/CSTV Climate Adaptation Coop Research Funding until the end of November. Email Scott Campbell if you have questions, or connect with Natasha Poley to apply.
New courses for Winter 2025
Check out our new courses for Winter 2025:
- STV 201 Technology and Society in Film
- STV 304 Technology in Canadian Society
Posters and details here.
Social Innovators in Training, Winter 2024: Demo Day
The students we support in our Social Innovators in Training program are building prototypes and are starting down the path of putting together their pitches for the social impact fund.
This Wednesday, we are hosting Demo Day in our GreenHouse space and it is open to all members of the community. Students will be showcasing their prototypes and would welcome members of the community to join them as they continue to test and iterate on their ideas.
All are welcome and you may drop-in as your schedule permits.
- GreenHouse Demo Day - March 6 | 5:00-6:30pm @United College (GreenHouse space) - drop-in any time between 5:00-6:30pm
Events
Critical Tech Talk 11: Speculative Imaginaries and Technological Design
The Critical Media Lab is excited to invite you to register for Critical Tech Talk 11: Speculative Imaginaries and Technological Design with guest speaker Sherryl Vint, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, on how speculative fiction can help us cultivate a more inclusive social imagination.
This is a virtual event taking place on Zoom, Friday January 24th at 3:00 PM. Full details are below. Registration is required using this link.
We look forward to you joining us!
About the talk: Speculative fiction (sf) is an influential mode that shapes how we imagine what technologies and futures we find desirable, feasible, and valuable. But whose values inform imagined techno-utopian futures? How can we draw on the power of sf if we understand the genre not as a storehouse of technologies we might one day create, but instead as a critical engagement with the way that technology inevitably shapes the social world in ways that extend far beyond its intended use? Using the example of the intersection of sf with disability studies, this talk will outline how sf can function as a mode of enquiry, a rhetorical tool that can help us guide technological development toward greater inclusion and equity by opening new perspectives on the problems technology seeks to solve. Focusing on the specific example of sf written from the perspective of people with disability, it will show how such fictions can help us understand how to cultivate a more capacious social imagination as a crucial element of equitable and inclusive technological design.
Sherryl Vint is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies and of English at the University of California, Riverside, where she founded the Speculative Fictions and Cultures of Science program. She has published widely on science fiction, including, most recently, Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First Century Speculative Fiction (2021), Science Fiction: The Essential Knowledge (2021), and Programming the Future: Speculative Television and the End of Democracy (2022, co-authored with Jonathan Alexander). She was a founding editor of Science Fiction Film and Television and is the Managing Editor of Science Fiction Studies and editor of book series Science in Popular Culture.