Technology and Social Change: Life in the Coming Years

Most social studies courses explore the past.  This course explores the future.  What will the coming decades be like?  How will current and newly developing technologies alter not only our daily lives but perhaps what it means to be human? How will an internet a billion times more powerful than today’s empower humanity? What changes might augmented reality and AI bring? What happens when machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence?  Given that the coming decades will likely bring the greatest changes in human history so far, what do you need to know to better understand our rapidly changing world? What challenges, dangers, and opportunities lie before us and what skills might you need to successfully navigate the future?  Although we will explore multiple areas of coming change, most of the course will focus on technological changes based on current expert predictions for the next 20 years and less certain theories about the decades beyond.