Check out our new courses for Winter 2025:
Posters and details here.
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.
The focus of the course is on good design, particularly where design relates to society and social issues. Good design reflects not only technical achievement but also responsiveness to social context and values. Topics include the nature of design, the social and cultural implications of design, the roles of designers in relation to the social contract, and design assessment in light of social values such as risk, fairness, progress, and sustainability. Although the focus of the course is on the design of technology, any designed system is open for examination and discussion. The course material provides a mixture of theoretical concepts and practical cases of their application.
Instructor: Cameron Shelley
Cybernetics is the study of the interfaces between humans and machines. This course will present an overview of cybernetics from automation and robotics to prosthetics and wearable computing. The roles of men and women in a post-human era will be discussed along with related themes dealing with gender, cyberspace, politics and popular culture.
Instructor: Mark Morley
The course has been designed to provide a framework or set of intellectual tools to help students understand and evaluate technological change. These tools will be applied to the development of information technology, its interaction with society, and possible future senarios. Selected topics include understanding digitization as culture, visions of the future and perils of prediction, as well as issues related to application areas such as the home, manufacturing, office work, design and services, education, and law. The course will also consider some of the privacy and personal dignity issues associated with information technology.
Biotechnology and society affect each other in ways that increase in number and significance each year. The purpose of this course is to understand the developing relationship between biotechnology and society. A variety of areas are examined, including agriculture, human fertility, eugenics, medicine, social policy, crime, security, and so on. Our concern is with how biotechnology is (or will be) making the world better or worse, and for whom. Some emphasis is placed on materials pertinent to Canada.
Instructor: Cameron Shelley
This course examines the interaction of the technologies developed by a culture with the values and social organization of that culture. The course exposes students to various definitions of society, technology and values, and it presents alternative views about how the three interact. These views are then applied to a number of spheres of influence, including patterns of employment and the role of work; medicine and health; polity and economy; sustainable development and the environment.
This course draws on a variety of worldviews, especially Indigenous ones, relating to the role of engineering in a healthy and sustainable future.
Winter 2024
Instructor: Matt Borland
The objective of this course is to introduce students to ethical and social concerns relating to Artificial Intelligence (AI). These concerns include historical determinism, governance, utopianism, biopower, human rights, robo-ethics, justice, accountability, and fairness. An overview will be provided on these issues as they arise in areas like art, commerce, education, finance, journalism, law, healthcare, transportation, warfare, and work.
Winter 2024
Instructor: Cameron Shelley
The course has been designed to provide a framework or set of intellectual tools to help students understand and evaluate technological change. These tools will be applied to the development of information technology, its interaction with society, and possible future scenarios. Selected topics include understanding digitization as culture, visions of the future and the perils of prediction, as well as issues related to application areas such as the home, manufacturing, office work, design and services, education, and law. The course will also consider some of the privacy and personal dignity issues associated with information technology.
Winter 2024
Instructor: Cosmin Munteanu