This year's annual Science, Technology, and Society-sponsored Arthur Miller Lecture on Science and Ethics -- "When I Say 'We,' Who Is Talking? Ethical Dimensions of Pronoun Usage in Science and Technology Discourse" -- will be delivered by John Staudenmaier on Monday, May 7 at 4pm in Bartos Theater (Building E15).
Mr. Staudenmaier, a Jesuit priest and professor of history at the University of Detroit Mercy, has been editor of Technology and Culture since 1995. He has served as visiting faculty at MIT, Santa Clara University and Boston College.
He has written several historiographical studies of the history of technology, most notably Technology's Storytellers: Reweaving the Human Fabric (MIT Press, 1985). He interprets cultural mentalities as they influence the direction of technological change and core technologies as they shape personal, institutional and communal behavior within their host societies.
The lecture honors the memory of Dr. Arthur Miller, an MIT alumnus (SB 1945) noted for his distinguished work in electronic measurement and instrumentation.
During World War II, he was loaned out by the Sanborn Co. (later incorporated into Hewlett-Packard) to the Radiation Laboratory, where he worked for several years. His medical contributions included methods to reduce shock hazards in hospital monitoring systems, and designing the first commercial cardiographs that featured adequate patient circuit isolation from line and ground.
The talk is free and open to the public. For more information, call Debbie Meinbresse at x3-4062.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on May 2, 2001.
