Skip to content

Dave Unger

Writes and teaches about work, skill, the poetics of technology, regional economics, and what it takes to create a humane life and society.

The History of Work — A New Class

This semester (Spring 2021) I’m teaching a new class about the history of work. We’re asking: If making, doing, and caring are fundamental human activities that fulfill basic human needs, why are so many jobs miserable? We’ll also be thinking about how thing could be made better.

Significant Stories– Student Podcast

Learn about climate migration, pandemic-time schooling, explosive science demonstrations and more in this podcast series created by students in the “Significant Stories” class that Shireen Hamza and I taught in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard.

Harvard from Home: Oral Histories from the Pandemic

“Harvard from Home” is a collection of stories from members of the Harvard community during the COVID-19 pandemic, when students, staff, and instructors have all been sent off campus. While the community is scattered geographically and together virtually, members of the community have each experienced this extraordinary event in their own ways and in their own spaces. By collecting, sharing, and preserving these stories, this project hopes to create a place to begin to weave the individual voices into a community experience and shared memory.

E05 — Untangling the Web (Online Communities pt.1)

Today’s internet is not the utopia that the technology-builders promised. With disinformation campaigns, hate groups, bullying, advertisements, and corporate and government surveillance, it’s hard to feel optimistic about life online. These problems are not incidental to today’s platforms– they grow out of structures and assumptions that are built into the foundations of these systems. This episode introduces a series of episodes about the history of the bundle of elements that make up the social web. By looking at the underlying political philosophies, struggles and comprises between competing visions, and paths not taken, we can better understand origin of the problems and imagine new kinds of solutions.