51-672 Design Seminar: Technology, Ethics & Politics
6 units, Carnegie Mellon University
Technological artifacts and platforms are developed and created to realize specific aims, needs, and desires, and in turn, those artifacts end up changing and molding human behavior and larger social, cultural, economic, political and ecological systems. Human ideas, dispositions, worldviews, and imaginaries in turn, also shape and mold the artifacts we make in effect, technologies are political and ethical dispositions made material and durable. Understanding how technology both shapes and molds, and is shaped and molded by, the human condition, is imperative for people working, directly or indirectly, with the creation of technologies, and this course has been designed as an interrogation of the products of our making. It is an exploration of many different approaches culled from a plurality of disciplines philosophy, science and technology studies, cultural studies, history, political science etc., in thinking about the politics and ethics of artifacts, of practices of making, and about how technology is caught up with contemporary public issues. Examples of topics we will cover taste regimes and libidinal economies in relation to the sharing economy, discourse and dissent in the public sphere and social media, the geopolitics of knowledge and technogenealogies etc. This is primarily a seminar course, and so lots of reading, watching, listening will be expected, supplemented by inclass exercises and discussions of case studies, where we will use our newly gained knowledge and insights to deliberate on current issues around old, current, and emerging technologies.
Prerequisites: none listed
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