SGER: Workshop: Rethinking Technology After September 11 (March 2002)

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Project Abstract SES 0220979 SGER: Rethinking Technology After September 11 Rosalind Williams, MIT This SGER award supports a small conference at MIT, where a small group of scholars gathered to discuss the implications for research, education, and public engagement among historians and social scientists in technology studies following the destructive events of September 11, 2001, and their aftermath. Participants discussed the following four questions: 1. What knowledge and perspective do historians and social scientists have to offer to scholarly and public understanding of those events? 2. What do those events suggest in the way of new agendas, priorities, and directions for research in these fields? 3. What do those events suggest in the way of new agendas, priorities, and directions for education in these fields? 4. What do those events suggest in the way of new forms of political and social engagement for practitioners and organizations in these fields? The primary outcome of the meeting is several sessions and workshops at the 2002 annual meetings of the major scholarly organizations in the field: the annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) in October 2002 (Toronto), and the joint meeting of SHOT and the Society for the Social Study of Science (4S) in Atlanta in October 2003. In addtiion, a weekly seminar is to be held at MIT, in conjunction with the Knight Science Journalism Program and the new Science Writing degree program at MIT, on "Current Events in Science and Technology." Also the workshop is to be highlightedin the newsletter for the Society of the History of Technology and newsletters of several other scholarly societies in order to stimulate thinking about the subject among as wide an audience as possible. John Krige, Editor of the journal History and Technology has offered to publish a summary of the workshop and any papers that are produced as a result of our discussions.