Call us Sara and Deb or Debbie, respectively, both she/her. sara.hendren@olin.edu / debbie.chachra@olin.edu Sara’s office hours are here, updated regularly. Deb’s office hours are by appointment.

What happens when design and engineering research results in activism, human rights work, politics, or matters of equity and justice? Engineers and designers are often thought of as “problem-solvers” in mostly technical, practical, and formal senses. But this class explores the equally compelling history of engineering and design projects that raise difficult questions, aid marginalized communities, address urgent social issues, or create new social conditions.We’ll talk to designers, artists, and engineers who work on issues of sustainability, power, health, education, and more. And we’ll run our own experiments in creative design work for the public good. The class includes significant reading, field trip(s) and guest lectures, short experiments, and a culminating project.We want you to witness and be inspired by the exciting, expansive fields of what are variously called social design, engineering for the public good, socially engaged art practices, and many other names. However, we also want you to be well versed in the many, many pitfalls of so-called “activist” work with technology—when it’s under-informed, poorly researched, focused on form and not on substance, it risks not only being ineffective, but can lead to actual harm. We take this risk seriously, so this course will have you mostly listening, learning, listening and learning some more, and, finally proposing—not carrying out fully-fledged projects in one semester. Trust us on this: We can have fun and be at play with ideas while also operating with due diligence as socially-minded engineers and designers. Humility and questions are your trusty companions here, your true north. We want to help you to lay a foundation; you will have many, many future opportunities to build the house.

WASHINGTON — As a teenager, Keoni Gandall already was operating a cutting-edge research laboratory in his bedroom in Huntington Beach, Calif.

Cody Wilson’s Ghost Gunner milling machine makes the most crucial element of an assault rifle. It costs just $1,500 and there’s a waiting list to get it.

Floating around the Internet are plans for a semi-automatic pistol constructed out of sheet metal. Like so many plans for 3D printed guns, it appears no one has actually built one of these pistols.

The story of Z was supposed to be about how biohacking had allowed her to become immortal. She lived in the year 2040, and by most measures her life was happy. Her mother’s body had died five years prior, but her consciousness was uploaded to the global grid and they still spoke frequently.

The Catalan collective GynePunk wants to decolonize the female body. To this end, it is developing first aid gynecological tools, for socially disadvantaged women, refugees, sex workers. But also for themselves.

Combining French New Wave and social media, 'The Villains' - a pseudo-remake of Jean-Luc Godard's "La Chinoise" (itself a pseudo-remake of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Possessed). In this case, the film takes the group of young revolutionaries as a jumping off point but changes Mao with Marshall McLuhan, and when watched online, is collaged with other algorithmically-selected videos. View the full film for free at thevillains.org Read about it at ANIMAL New York here: animalnewyork.com/2014/artists-notebook-rhett-jones/Cast: rhett jonesTags: The Villains, Trailer, net art, experimental film, Godard, La Chinoise, data moshing, Marshall McLuhan (Author), digressionism, Appropriation (Exhibition Subjec, mashup, fair use, post internet, Remix, independent film, DIY, Do It Yourself, pixel shifting, Pixel Art and Glitch Art

Suppose you wanted to build your own drone—well, hold on a minute—why do you want to build your own drone?

What do you mean, “why?” The answer is, you'd go to Dronepedia  first, and then to DIY Drones , where you'd find out where to get started with a simple kit or pre-made drone.

But suppose you just wanted to find out some of the latest info on the US government's top secret drone projects. Don't even ask me why, it should be obvious. You'd want to do like artist Trevor Paglen , and travel to remote testing locations to snap photographs of strange shapes taking off from military bases, along with the planespotters. Either that, or travel to  Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, and now Somalia  with a good pair of binoculars.

We have confidence in our science-based civilization and think it has tenure. In so doing, I think we fail to distinguish between the life-span of civilizations and that of our species. In fact, civilizations are ephemeral compared with species. Humans have lasted at least a million years, but there have been 30 civilizations in the past 5000 years. Humans are tough and will survive; civilizations are fragile. It seems clear to me that we are not evolving in intelligence, not becoming true Homo sapiens. Indeed there is little evidence that our individual intelligence has improved through the 5000 years of recorded history.