Society and Technology
Diagnosing the Digital Present
Assignment Overview Deadline May. 6th 2pm
What important issues impact the current relationship between Society and Technology?
Which of these issues matter to you?
In groups of three research your chosen area. Create a log of your results in your Slack channel.
Individually create a mid-fidelity prototype with some hi-fidelity aspects / screens that explores and implements your research.
You should aim for your final prototype / project and documentation to be a platform and showcase for your creative skills.
Example approaches:
Creating a prototype that supports an organisation such as a charity, community interest group or company that is working in or associated with your defined area of interest.
Creating a prototype that supports a campaign or movement that is associated with your defined area of interest.
Creating a prototype that addresses a specific user group or audience that is associated with your defined area of interest.
Introduction to Society & Technology
Our networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other. Wed rather text than talk.
Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Hachette UK.
Technological Dominance
The reliance of more and more platforms on remote server connections has meant that we have come to quite literally live inside computation.
A passenger ticket is in many ways a material embodiment of code/space on which are printed several data codes, which although meaningful to the software programs that facilitate travel, are mostly meaningless to the passenger.
Kitchin, R., & Dodge, M. (2011). Code/space: Software and everyday life. Mit Press
Privacy and data
All information should be free
Mistrust Authority Promote
Decentralization.
Wark, M. (2004) Hacker Manifesto. Harvard University Press.
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/
TheyWorkForYou is run by mySociety, a UK charity. We build web tools that make democracy a little more
accessible. mySociety is not politically-aligned, and its projects are for everyone to use.
https://citizenfourfilm.com/
Time sharing networks will inevitably create collisions and leaks between users because users exist side by side
Man says he once requested an Uber driver from his wifes phone. Despite logging off, the application continued to send notifications to her iPhone.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world- europe-38948281
Digital empowerment
One principle difference between mass media and networked social media is that the network architecture lowers the cost of becoming a speaker, meaning there can be more speakers, and that it is easier to perceive oneself as a possible speaker.
Benkler, Y. (2007) Wealth of Networks. (no place) Yale University Press.
The most effective activism comes from the degree of personal connection to others in the same movement.
Gladwell, M. (2010) Small Change. The New Yorker Available from: https://www.newyorker.com/maga zine/2010/10/04/small-change-mal colm-gladwell
Automation and anxiety
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-41832065
How a chess match started the big data
revolution
The Information Society and the 4th Scientific revolution
Floridi, Luciano. (2010). Information: A very short introduction. OUP Oxford.
The coming of the post-industrial society, Daniel Bell 1976
Shifts in society:
Move from manufacturing to services
Rise of professional and technical employment and the decline of semi-skilled workers.
Today education has become the basis of social mobility rather than inheritance, especially with the expansion of professional and technical jobs.
The infrastructure of industrial society was transportation. The infrastructure of the post-industrial society is communication.
The rise of intellectual technology, software and automated systems Bell, Daniel. (1976). The coming of the post-industrial society.
The Scientific
revolutions: 1.
Copernicus
1534, Copernicus model for the solar system is heliocentric, with the planets circling the sun rather than Earth.
The Scientific
revolutions: 2.
Darwin
1859, Darwin showed that all species have evolved from a common ancestor.
The Scientific
revolutions: 3.
Freud
1900, Freud showed us the mind has an unconscious mechanism and we are far from being totally transparent to ourselves
The Scientific
revolutions: 4.
Turing
1950, proposed that intelligence is not confined to humans, that machines can also have intelligence
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