Scholars came to Macalester for the ninth annual International Roundtable last weekend to present papers on the topic of "Prometheus's Bequest: Technology and Change."

The keynote speaker was David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the City University of New York. His paper, which he presented on Thursday, Oct. 10, addressed the fetishization of technology. Harvey defines fetishism as the modern tendency to "endow objects or things with endogenous, mysterious and even magical powers to move and shape the world in distinctive ways." As this fetishism applies to technology, capitalist society has come to view technological progress in a vacuum, thus neglecting the social and mental conceptions which are intrinsically embedded in it.

On Friday, Oct. 11, three members of Macalester's Art Department gave a presentation called "Reflections on Art and Technology." Artist and Rutgers University Professor Martha Rosler had been scheduled to speak, but was unable to attend. Professors Stanton Sears and Ruthann Godollei were joined by sculptor and Macalester alumnus Andrea Mycklebust in a discussion of the dynamic relationship between art and technology. They spoke of the ways in which art has benefited from technology and the limits of such innovation.

Joel Mokyr, Professor of Economics and History at Northwestern University, spoke on Friday afternoon. His presentation, entitled "Thinking about Technology and Institutions," focused on knowledge as the basis for technological change. According to Mokyr, the Enlightenment, not the Industrial Revolution, is what determined Europe's technological preeminence by establishing a complementary relationship between technology and institutions.

Macalester alumnus David Tallman '00 responded to Mokyr's presentation, discussing the role of institutions in acting as a check on technological progress. Economics Professor Peter Ferderer also gave a response, citing examples of countries who had achieved economic progress by importing Western innovations.

Saturday's morning session featured Nazli Choucri, Professor of Political Science and Head of the Middle East Program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She presented a paper on the topic of "Technology and Development: Implications for the Middle East." She identified the region as being a "dense concentration of dilemmas," the most salient of which is impeded access to knowledge. She specifically described energy and water control as two immediate problems whose solutions may lie in innovation.

In his response, Macalester Political Science professor Frank Adler engaged Choucri's "realist concept of politics."

The final session, on Saturday afternoon, was led by Aphra Kerr, who recently earned her Ph.D in Communications Studies at Dublin City University in Ireland. Her presentation, "Suil Eile: An Irish Perspective on the Mass Media and Globalization," stressed the importance of criticism regarding the mass media. Kerr emphsized the link between technology and social change, noting that particularly smaller nations cannot be dependant on mass media coverage to keep people informed.

Macalester English Professor Stephen Burt was optomistic about technology in his response to Kerr's presentation. He spoke of the Internet as a means for preservation of material that might otherwise become obscured, citing several websites that feature eclectic forms of poetry and music.