Penn Students Discuss ‘Emerging Technologies and the Future of the World’

Technological change relies on more than the next innovation engineers dream up in lab. The adoption, proliferation and impact of new technology exists in deeply interconnected web of political, legal and social factors.

With that in mind, Penn is now offering a new, interdisciplinary course that explores those connections: “Emerging Technologies and the Future of the World.”

Taught by Vijay Kumar, the Nemirovsky Family Dean of Penn Engineering, Michael C. Horowitz, professor of political science in the Penn Arts and Sciences and Associate Director of Perry World House, Christopher S. Yoo, the John H. Chestnut Professor of Law, Communication, and Computer & Information Science in Penn Law and Director of the Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition, and Chris Liu, a graduate student in political science, the course is not just about absorbing knowledge from these disparate realms, but synthesizing ideas and making new arguments from them.

Students in the course will publish these ideas and arguments on a new blog hosted by the instructors:

Our publication is based on a new, experimental course at the University of Pennsylvania called “Emerging Technologies and the Future of the World.” It is the first course at Penn cross-listed between the Engineering School and the Political Science department in the School of Arts and Sciences. The course is designed to explore the reality of technological change — both what is actually happening and what it will mean for the world. The instructors come from different perspectives — engineering, law, and the social sciences — reflecting the fact that understanding how emerging technologies will change the world requires interdisciplinary knowledge. Our students also come from diverse backgrounds, including engineering, business, political science, and computer science. In the course, students are exposed to a broad range of experts, including those responsible for designing and building technologies, those working on legal and regulatory approaches for technology, and those thinking about how governments may design policies to take advantage of the opportunities presented by technological change.

Continue reading at the Technology, Innovation, and Society blog.