Technology is transforming society, sometimes in unpredictable ways. 

In a spring quarter course taught by Stanford Professor Ban Wang, COLLEGE 113: Utopia, Dystopia, and Technology in Science Fiction, students considered some of those potential changes by using science fiction as a way to imagine what could unfold and their own responsibility and agency in that future.

Each week, students read novels, essays, and films to examine the consequences and the ethical implications of science and technology.

One featured book was The Three Body Problem by Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin.

During a Tuesday afternoon seminar with Wang, students discussed the book’s wide-ranging topics, which include history (like the Chinese Cultural Revolution), science (such as quantum mechanics), and philosophy (including the meaning of life).

The book captures the many ways people have tried to understand their place in an ever-expanding universe, ranging from religion, faith, and mysticism, others to science, fact, and reason. The students debated these topics and more in class that day.

“What is the fundamental nature of matter is the ultimate scientific question,” Wang said to the class.

He also posed questions from the book to the students:

“Can the fundamental nature of matter really be lawlessness? Can the stability and order of the world be but a temporary dynamic equilibrium achieved in a corner of the universe, a short-lived eddy in a chaotic current?”

This prompted a conversation about the many ways to conduct science and the various methodologies, like observation and predictability, that researchers use to explain phenomena.

The COLLEGE learning experience

Wang’s seminar was one of 10 different courses offered in the spring quarter as a part of Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE), Stanford’s first-year requirement designed to deepen students’ critical and ethical understanding of society and the world. Each quarter, COLLEGE focuses on a different theme: in fall, students reflect on their own goals and purpose; in winter, they examine their role as engaged citizens; and in spring, they examine themselves in a global context.

“The class is about how we debate the worries and concerns, hopes and anxieties about rapid technological advances and the way technology has been impacting our society and our minds,” said Wang, the William Haas Professor in Chinese Studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S). “Students tackle the impact, good and bad, of technology on our society, on our values, human nature, and our ecology.”

Other books students read included Ernest Callenbach’s novel Ecotopia, a fictional account about an environmentally sustainable utopia in the Pacific Northwest where inhabitants live free from mass consumerism, urban sprawl, and pollution. However, dystopian themes emerge – revealing how trying to do the right thing can go wrong.

Students also watched several movies, including Wandering Earth, a Chinese film that depicts a global endeavor to preserve humanity through planetary migration, and Avatar, about a former Marine who uses technology to embody an alien form on another planet and finds himself torn between his mission and a growing bond with the local inhabitants.

Upsides and downsides 

As students learned, science fiction is a thought-provoking genre for thinking about what could happen in years to come. Current trends and emerging technologies are projected onto imaginative futures, challenging readers to consider the social, ethical, and even existential consequences of innovation.

“This class really showed me the intersection between science and technology and what it can lead to in the future, and how we have to be careful about future implementations,” said Rishi Sadanandan, ’27, who took Wang’s class this past spring.

Students also watched Joon-ho Bong’s post-apocalyptic science fiction film, Snowpiercer, which depicts how a geoengineering mistake resulted in the world becoming frozen over. The last surviving humans live on a giant train that circles the globe, battling for survival amid violent class warfare.

Sadanandan appreciated how the film captured both the upsides and downsides of technology. On the one hand, the movie highlighted the promise of technology to address climate change – a coolant had been injected into the atmosphere to stop global warming. On the other hand, it can go terribly wrong.

“That really made me think that you have to be careful with how you’re going to implement technology in the future because all technology has positive and negative effects,” Sadanandan said.

Discovering agency

Wang started teaching science fiction seven years ago while exploring the representations of technology and environmental degradation. His interest was piqued when Melissa Hosek, an avid fan of science fiction and one of his graduate students, shared how the genre envisions these impacts. Hosek, who earned her PhD in Chinese from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, is now a COLLEGE instructor and one of the section leaders on the course. Since then, Wang’s fascination with science fiction has grown, as the genre’s scenarios increasingly mirror our reality.

In his COLLEGE course, Wang introduced students to the concept of “critical dystopias” – using science fiction to reflect on contemporary trends, problems, and issues and to consider alternatives and solutions.

“Science fiction intervenes as a debating platform,” Wang said. The genre voices both dissent and triumphalism of technology, making it a useful tool for discourse, he added. 

Wang hopes that through exposure to science fiction, students will recognize their own agency and self-determination in a rapidly changing world and consider their own role and responsibilities to protect the future.

Sadanandan feels galvanized after having taken the course.

“These movies are there to warn you that it could be like that if you don’t make the right decisions,” Sadanandan said. “We live in a time where our choices can make and change the future. I’m ready to change the future.” 

Wang’s class was one of eight sections offered in spring 2024 with COLLEGE lecturers Hosek, Ruth Averbach, and Matthew Palmer leading the other sections.