Technology and Culture Minor

From the photograph to digital imaging, film to YouTube, television to online gaming, technologies are shaping and reshaping the ways we express, interpret, and understand ourselves and our lives. The IDS Minor in Technology and Culture offers students the opportunity to explore the connections between technology and culture and examine how these interrelations shape our experience and understanding of contemporary life. Through a selection of interdisciplinary courses, students can study both how technology has shaped the cultural environment and how the interpretation of culture helps us to understand the diversity of experiences – the hopes, opportunities, and anxieties – of living in an increasingly complex technological world. Doing so helps us to understand what it means to be a part of this world, and empowers us to engage it by developing the critical skills to analyze, interpret, and navigate the interrelations between technology and culture.

Total Credit Hours: 20

To earn the Interdisciplinary Studies Minor in Technology and Culture, students must successfully complete 20 credits from the courses listed below, of which a minimum of 8 credits be taken at the 300/400 level. Students must earn a C average in the courses applied towards the minor and earn a minimum grade of C- in each course applied toward the minor. A minimum of eight credits applied towards the minor must be taken at SUNY Poly.

A. 100/200 level courses

  • IDS 102 Art and Culture
  • IDS 103 Science, Technology, and Human Values
  • IDS 201 Perspectives on Knowledge
  • IDS 220 Creativity and Culture

B. 300/400 level courses (minimum 8 credits)

  • IDS 301 Monsters, Robots, Cyborgs
  • IDS 302 Postmodernism and Popular Culture
  • IDS 304 Technology in American History
  • IDS/COM 380 Critical Perspectives on Digital Society
  • IDS 435 Art and Technology