Some people challenged this faith in the inevitable benefits of technological change. At first this challenge was limited to a few intellectuals who criticized the consumer society of the 1950s, with its bland suburbs, conformist white-collar bureaucracies, and mind-numbing advertising. In the late 1950s, this critique was taken up by new social movements that attacked the most dramatic technological achievement of World War II, the atomic bomb. In the early 1960s, critics shifted ground to new technologies, most importantly synthetic pesticides and the automobile, and made connections with the new environmental movement. Critics of technology drew strength from the counterculture of the 1960s, which encouraged political and social activism against large-scale technologies like nuclear power. The counterculture also strengthened groups seeking to create counter-technologies, such as solar energy. Even in the midst of today's enthusiasm for everything digital, technology's critics continue to expose the dark side of technological change.

Requirements (for the 4 credits in HS 622 and the concurrent HS 322): active engagement with the material and participation in discussion, weekly "think pieces" and review report (25%); three reviews (ca. 5 pages each) of three additional books (not fewer than 600 pages total) that are new to the student and that go into depth on some aspect of the course (15% each); one take-home, 8-10-page synthetic final essay (30%). The readings listed on the syllabus under "Grad supplement" are required of grad students.

Assignments will include issue papers, leadership in discussion, book reviews, and a historiographical paper. In addition to many articles, the readings are likely to include Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What? (Harvard,1999); Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1970); and Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge, 1988).