University of Ontario Institute of Technology

COMM 1050U

uNIT 3 : TECHNOLOGY AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS

Q1: According to Alain de Benoist, this is the 'real' religion of Western civilisation:

a      Judeo-Christianity b        Islam

c      Christianity

a      The idea of progress

a      All of these answers

Q2: According to the article by Jared Diamond, this is one of the 'curses' brought upon humanity by the adoption of agriculture.

a      Sexual liberation

a      Deep class divisions

1. Rococo art
2. Equality of the sexes
3. None of these answers

Q3: What does Colin Dickey mean when he asserts that technology has made the natural world 'sublime'?

a      A dangerous thing made safe; a re-affirmation of the power of humanity to engineer it's own security

a      The strata of minerals under the liminal layer of the Earth's crust b        Predictable and annoyingly familiar

3. All of these answers
4. None of these answers

Q4: According to Jason Pontin, the strongest emotion (at the time) of the NASA Apollo missions was not about strategic victory in the Cold War, but about this:

a      The idea that the United States is king of the hill

a      The transcendent powers of technology (the ability of technology to accomplish 'big things').

a      The victory of Americans over Soviet technology. b        All of these answers

c      None of these answers

Q5: According to author Conlin Dickey, human civilization doesn't necessarily progress in the way we expect. While technology moves along a linear axis, it is complemented by this.

a      Angry pedestrians and motorists b        A return of the Dark Ages

c      Governments which are unable to compete in an increasingly globalized economy

a      A cyclical resurgence of human forgetting, folly, and failure.

a      All of these answers

Q6: According to Alain de Benoit, the following is one of the three key ideas that all theorists of progress agree on.

a      The idea that the world can and must be transformed, which implied that humanity asserts itself as sovereign master of nature

a      The idea that we will inevitably discover the truth about cosmos b        The idea that technology will always make things better over time

3. The idea that we continue to consume resources at the existing rate indefinitely, with more and more resources at our disposal
4. Non of these answers

Q7: As we saw in the online lecture, according to this view, technology has a negative impact on human life.

1. Utopian
2. Scientizing
3. Autonomous
4. Lubigrifictatious

a      Non of these answers

Q8: According to Jason Pontin, in order to solve big problems with technology, this must be present:

1. We must understand the problem.
2. It must really be a technological problem.
3. Political leaders and the public must care to solve the problem. d        Institutions must support the solution to the problems