Dr. R. John Williams is Associate Professor at Yale University where he teaches in the departments of English and Film and Media Studies. He is the author of "The Buddha in the Machine: Art, Technology and the Meeting of East and West" (Yale University Press, 2014), which examines the role of technological discourse in the development of Asian religious experience in the United States and Europe.

Here he discusses his courses on modernity, time, human presence, and "futurology" as ways to understand how human relationships with technology have changed in the modern era.