Cover: Science and Technology, 2nd Edition by Erica Duran; Lauren Mecucci Springer

Science and Technology

Second  Edition©2026  Erica Duran; Lauren Mecucci Springer

About

Read and write about science and technology.  


Part of the Bedford Spotlight Reader Series, Science and Technology brings critical topics to life in a portable, cost-effective format. You’ll explore questions such as: How do you interact with science and technology in your daily life? How much are you willing to trade for privacy? Can technology restore our planet—or will it deepen environmental harm?

Readings by biologists, climate scientists, journalists, ethicists, novelists, engineers, and others take on these issues and more. This book helps you form your own questions and responses as you investigate and write about this important and intellectually rich topic. It includes the essays and assignments you need to succeed in your composition course.

Table of Contents

About the Bedford Spotlight Reader Series
Preface for Instructors
We’re here to help.
Contents by Discipline
Contents by Theme

Introduction for Students

Chapter 1. What Makes Us Human?
Sheldon Krimsky, Creating Good from Immoral Acts
Hillary Rosner, All Too Human
Jon Cohen, The Horror Story That Haunts Science: Two Hundred Years Later, Frankenstein Still Shocks and Inspires
Will Knight, This Is a Glimpse of the Future of AI Robots
Oshan Jarow, Will AI Ever Become Conscious? It Depends on How You Think About Biology
Alexis Kayser, Hospitals Are Reporting More Insurance Denials. Is AI Driving Them?
Adam Echelman, ‘Getting Significantly Worse’: California Community Colleges Are Losing Millions to Financial Aid Fraud
Diana Kwon, AI Is Complicating Plagiarism. How Should Scientists Respond?

Chapter 2. How Much Is Privacy Worth to You?
Bekah McCallum, Fake Pornography, Real Victims
Ken Liu, Thoughts and Prayers
William Eyre, Surveillance Today
Paul Mozur, Mark Scott, and Mike Isaac, Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein in a Wild Web
Steven Aftergood, Privacy and the Imperative of Open Government
Brooke Auxier, How Americans See Digital Privacy Issues amid the COVID-19 Outbreak
Kate Weisburd and Alicia Virani, The Monster of Incarceration Quietly Expands through Ankle Monitors
Cory Doctorow, Affordances

Chapter 3. Will Technology Heal the Planet—or Exploit It Further?
Beth Shapiro, Reversing Extinction
Cecilia Butini, Drug-Resistant Bacteria Are Killing More and More Humans. We Need New Weapons
Mining-Technology.com, The Cost of Green Energy: Lithium Mining’s Impact on Nature and People
Sara Schonhardt, Geoengineering the Climate Could Pose a New Risk to the Planet, U.N. Fears
Jan Zastrow, The Environmental Impact of Digital Preservation—Can Digital Ever Go Green?
Samuel Gilbert, Nine Practices from Native American Culture That Could Help the Environment
Shannon Osaka, With Microplastics, Scientists Are in a Race Against Time
Joanna Thompson, Working Remotely Can More Than Halve an Office Employee’s Carbon Footprint

Chapter 4. Is Big Tech Coding Prejudice into Our Future?
Emilio Ferrara, Fairness and Bias in Artificial Intelligence: A Brief Survey of Sources, Impacts, and Mitigation Strategies
Anil Oza, Emily Kwong, Thomas Lu, and Gabriel Spitzer, COVID-19 Made Pulse Oximeters Ubiquitous. Engineers Are Fixing Their Racial Bias
Melba Newsome, Confronting Racism in Computer Science
Tonantzin Carmona, Debunking the Narratives About Cryptocurrency and Financial Inclusion
Malcolm Gladwell, Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted
Leo Mirani, Sorry, Malcolm Gladwell, the Revolution May Well Be Tweeted
Farnaz Fassihi and Leily Nikounazar, A Viral Dance and ‘Happiness Campaign’ Frustrates Iran’s Clerics
Leily Nikounazar and Aaron Boxerman, Women’s Rights Activists Rounded Up in Iran as Protest Anniversary Nears

Chapter 5. Who—or What—Controls Our Economy?
Matt Britton, The Peer-to-Peer Economy
Meagan Johnson, Stop Talking About Work/Life Balance! TEQ and the Millennial Generation
Chris Anderson, Drones Go to Work
James Manyika, Technology, Jobs, and the Future of Work
David Rotman, ChatGPT Is About to Revolutionize the Economy. We Need to Decide What That Looks Like
Edmund L. Andrews, How Flawed Data Aggravates Inequality in Credit
Arash Nekoei, Jósef Sigurdsson, and Dominik Wehr, The Economics of Burnout
Salett Nogueira, Digital Literacy as a Pathway to Economic Empowerment

Index of Authors and Titles

Erica Duran

Erica Duran is full-time English faculty in the Adult High School at MiraCosta College in Oceanside, CA. Erica spent eight years teaching first-year composition and critical thinking courses at the community college and university levels before her transition to teaching in noncredit programs at MiraCosta. She earned both a B.A. and M.A. in Literature and Writing Studies at Cal State University San Marcos, and she has completed coursework in the Post-Secondary Reading Certificate program at Cal State Fullerton. Although she has conducted research and presented on a variety of research topics from Ernest Hemingway’s post-war trauma to the flipped classroom format as an effective model for student veterans, her passion for exploring science and technology topics in the composition classroom continues to drive her current research interests.

Lauren Mecucci Springer

Dr. Lauren M. Mecucci Springer is a full professor of English at Mt. San Jacinto Community College in Southern California, an HSI, where she teaches composition and literature. Her research centers on feedback practices for writing classrooms, as well as across the curriculum; bringing STEM into first-year writing courses; and linguistic justice in writing classrooms. Currently, she is the faculty professional development and distance education coordinator.