Program Details

Instructor, Jenna Tonn
The most urgent problems in our society defy the boundaries of academic disciplines. This course focuses on technological disruption as a complex problem that is best understood through “bridge thinking” that integrates the approaches of the humanities, management, and science. The Bridge workshop examines three significant “general purpose” technologies that have disrupted and transformed society – electricity, the internet, and Generative AI – and uses these examples to develop the habits of mind that will equip students to navigate our changing world. This class will explore the 3 Cs: the collision of technology and society with the rise of mass electrification in the early twentieth century; the combination of technical and organizational regimes in developing the Internet and the high-tech economy; and the new connections that Generative AI has created in the classroom, the workplace, and beyond. Each of these “general purpose” technologies has raised fundamental questions of ethics, morality, and the social good. Through lectures, small group discussions, and in-class learning teams, students will learn how to transform knowledge into wisdom and become bridge thinkers ready to “set the world aflame.” 

Instructor, Michael Smith
The twenty-first century is being shaped by a series of technological revolutions that are transforming nearly every aspect of human life. From electrification to the internet to generative artificial intelligence, new technologies have altered how we work, communicate, govern, and understand ourselves. Yet these transformations also raise pressing questions that no single discipline can answer. How can technological innovation be reconciled with environmental sustainability? Why has unprecedented digital connectivity often produced loneliness, polarization, and inequality? How should organizations, communities, and individuals exercise sound judgment in an age increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence?

This seminar explores these questions through the practice of bridge thinking, or thinking that integrates the humanities, management, and sciences. Together, we will examine the hard problems raised by three significant general-purpose technologies that have disrupted and transformed society: electricity, the internet, and generative AI. We will use these complex problems, along with relevant historical cases and theoretical frameworks, to build skills for navigating our changing world. Throughout the semester, we will use the concepts of the three C’s, combination, connection, and collision, as lenses for understanding how technological change occurs, how innovations spread, and why they often produce unexpected consequences. We will explore the collision of technology and society with the rise of electrification and resulting environmental externalities. We will examine the combination of technical and organizational regimes in developing the internet and the high-tech economy, combining unprecedented social connection with high levels of loneliness and social division. And we will critically investigate the ongoing transformation of our social connections brought about by generative AI in the classroom, in future careers, and in local and global communities. Following the Catholic intellectual tradition, we will reflect on how these disruptions have raised ethical and epistemological questions and develop our own clear-eyed, well-researched recommendations for the future.

Rather than treating bridge thinking as an abstract ideal, this course approaches it as a practical habit of mind. Through seminar-style discussion, case analyses, collaborative projects, and policy design, students will learn to integrate multiple forms of knowledge, exercise sound judgment amid uncertainty, and become well-rounded bridge thinkers ready to “set the world aflame.”