Launching my new technology seminar | by Bryan Alexander | Sep, 2020

Tonight is the first session of my technology, innovation, and design seminar for Georgetown University’s Learning, Design, and Technology masters program. This seminar is required for all LDT students, so the class tends to be among the largest.

As usual for me, I like to share my teaching practice through this blog: its plans, hopes, crushing realities, and great student work.

The idea of the class is to take a deep dive into the many ways we understand technology. It’s interdisciplinary, involving approaches from sociology, history, feminism, critical race theory, business, medicine, philosophy, critical theory, Middle Eastern studies, gaming, and literature.

Students will do a good amount of work. I’ve got them down for weekly discussion board responses, one tech presentation each, a mid term bibliography, and a final paper/project, not to mention live discussions. I’ve also added a glossary of terms, which they get to collectively develop, wiki-style.

I’ve only taught the class once before. So I’ve kept what I thought worked best (topics, assignments, readings) and have added new stuff. It feels more history-heavy than last time, which is intentional, as I wanted to increase that dosage.

I’m excited about teaching a Reacting to the Past game. I’m still trying to get materials, but the game will probably focus on either the Luddites or early radio policy.

I’m recommending they watch some of these movies, but didn’t manage to require them.

Readings

• Ruha Benjamin, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code.
• Jon Gernter, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation.
• Steven Johnson, How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made The Modern World.
• Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 5th Edition.
• Reacting to the Past game — TBA
• Mohamed Zayani, ed., Digital Middle East State and Society in the Information Age.

Recommended texts:

• James Bridle, New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future.
• Charles Fadel, Wayne Holmes, Maya Bialik, Artificial Intelligence In Education: Promises and Implications for Teaching and Learning.
• James E McClellan and Harold Dorn, Science and Technology in World History, third edition.
• Carlota Perez, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages
• Alex Roland, War and Technology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press)
• Shoshana Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.

September 1

Topic: Introductions

Readings:

• the huge technological takeoff (one, two)

Exercises:

• Glossary of key terms
• Signing up for tech presentations

September 8

Topic: the history of technology

• Reading: How We Got To Now 1

Student tech presentation

September 15

Topic: the history of technology

• Reading: How We Got To Now 2

Student tech presentation

September 22

Topic: Imagining innovation

Readings:

Student tech presentation

September 29

Topic: how innovations spread

Student tech presentation

October 6

Topic: how innovations spread

Student tech presentation

October 13

Topic: how to nurture innovation

Reading: Jon Gernter, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (Selections)

Student tech presentation

October 20

Topic: Simulating technological possibilities: RTTP

Student tech presentation

October 23 — midterm project due

October 27

Topic: Justice and innovation, or Does technology have a politics?

Readings:

• Benjamin, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, selections.
• Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”

Student tech presentation

November 3

Topic: Justice and innovation, 2

Reading:

Student tech presentation

November 10

Topic: beyond the western world

• Reading: Digital Middle East, selections

Student tech presentation

November 17

Topic: technology among human beings

Student tech presentation

November 24 — no class; Thanksgiving holiday

December 1

Topic: futures

• Reading: TBD
• Presentations

December 12 — final project due

Comments are closed.