From Facebook to intelligence testing to immunizations, technology, science, and medicine permeate our modern lives. In this course, students will learn to think critically about technology, science, and medicine, what they do to us, and how they shape the world in spectacular and mundane ways. We explore questions such as: How have culture and politics shaped the goals and designs of such technologies as guns, washing machines, and electrical systems? How does an exploration of technologies deepen our understanding of both the past and the present? How are new technologies refashioning experiences of citizenship? How have science, technology, and politics interacted in debates over climate change? And, ultimately, how should we manage the tension between popular democracy and technical expertise? All of these themes will be addressed in this course, which will both introduce students to the dominant schools of thought in the history of science and Science and Technology Studies (STS) and will engage in critical discussion about the technologies that shaped our collective pasts and are reconfiguring our present.