Culture Tech
MIT's Experimental Study Group offers this six-unit seminar tracing how technology and culture shape each other across a sequence of hands-on modules. The course opens with a four-week unit on samurai swords and blacksmithing, moves through shorter modules on Chinese cooking, the invention of clocks, and Andean weaving, and closes with a four-week module on automobiles and engines. Alongside readings and discussion drawing on anthropology and history, students complete hands-on projects that pair the theoretical material with actual craft practice, such as forging or weaving techniques. Recurring themes include the difference between skill knowledge and craft knowledge, and how technical objects carry cultural meaning. The course grew out of MIT's two-semester Integrated Studies Program, an alternative first-year humanities-and-physics track that ran for 13 years, distilled here into a compact seminar. Materials are available through MIT OpenCourseWare at no cost.