TECHNOLOGY & TRANSCENDENCE: Scientific Ambition and the Human Condition

This myth is archetypal for the deepest questions that surround our ambivalent experience of technology. We’ll read texts, study films, and perform astronomical observation, pivoting on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (subtitled “the modern Prometheus”), and culminating in Ridley Scott’s masterpiece, Blade Runner. The modern enlightenment project set new ambitions for what technology can do, and we have, for the 200 years since Shelley’s novel transfixed our imagination, wrestled explicitly with the question of whether technology serves us, transforms us, or potentially dehumanizes us.