This book sprang from two different sources, both related to our positions as academics teaching Science, Technology and Society in the Faculty of Science and Technology at Griffith University. In the first instance, the imperatives of providing undergraduate students with a broad view of the relationships between the sciences, technology and the larger society seem to become more pressing as the years go by: industrial empires rise and fall, computerisation transforms the nature of work, and biology cuts ever closer to our concepts of who we are and why we are here. As a society, we have a fairly simple choice. We can ignore these changes and attempt to cope with them as they appear. Or we can seek to understand what is happening and to exert some measure of control. Our view is clear: we favour the latter option. The second reason for writing the book was the need to fill a gap in the market. Although many excellent books and papers exist for our area, we have not found a single work which covers the material we want students to understand, at the level which seems appropriate. So, after a good deal of thought, we decided to write our own.

At its most basic level, this book seeks to show undergraduate students (and first-year students in particular) what science, technology and society is all about. It presupposes no study in or knowledge of the area, and is pitched at a level which most students should find clear and comprehensible.