The Politics and Possibilities of Emerging Information Technologies

Duke University Literature Seminar 20.3, Spring 1996

Ted Friedman, Instructor

Syllabus / Assignments / Ted's Home Page / E-Mail Ted

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Often, the folks who pontificate about the future imply that it's out of our hands. Like it or not, Bill Gates tells us there's one "Road Ahead," and whether you were planning to follow it or not, AT&T insists, "You Will." (Notice how even the futurists' favorite verb, "will," so quickly slips from the future tense into the command tense.)

But there's more than one future out there. Just read a little science fiction and you'll see how many different ways things might plausibly (or not-so-plausibly) turn out.

Every statement of what the future will look like contains an implicit vision of what the future should (and/or shouldn't) look like. What are the assumptions behind each vision? Which futures would we want to live in? These are the kinds of questions this class asks.

By reading works of speculative fiction alongside materials addressing current issues in the politics, economics, and aesthetics of information technology, this course attempts to map out many possible futures - and think about which ones are worth looking forward to.

This class ended in the Spring of 1996, but the site lives on. Click below for more info: