Micro-Course: Technology, Humanity, and Social Justice

As humans rely more and more on electronic devices to support their everyday activities, there are ever present warnings about the impacts such reliance has on human autonomy ranging from who owns and controls information networks, the inequitable impact of technology consumption on peoples and places, varying accessibility of technology around the globe, and the promises and limitations of technology in improving human health. By engaging in technology as a lens, this sequence of weekend micro-courses encourages students to examine technology as a system disproportionately impacting humanity by enabling and constraining human rights of groups of people around the globe. With a multi-disciplinary focus, the course invites researchers and practitioners from the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon, and relevant fields more broadly. In Fall 2023, the focus will be on the impact technology has on human health. This will include a discussion about technology’s impact on human interactions, including mental health amid a pandemic and the changing reliance on technology on health care delivery. It will also include a focus on the accessibility and disparities on health care’s increased use of technology across the globe as well as the transition to digitizing health records and the dangers this creates in relation to privacy, among others. Previous micro-course sessions in this series focused on the environment and education.