Course Syllabus
TECHNICALLY
HUMAN:
THE ART AND THE ETHICS OF TECHNOLOGY
Email: ddonig@calpoly.edu
Office Hours: M/W 4-5pm https://calpoly.zoom.us/j/81521741253
Office Hours Meeting ID: 815 2174 1253
Class Meeting Link: https://calpoly.zoom.us/j/6484871456
Meeting ID: 648 487 1456
Synchronous Meeting Days/Times: MW 2-4pm PDT
Google. Facebook. Twitter. Uber. Tinder. The way that we navigate our world and our lives has been fundamentally changed by the ideas, the decisions, the designs, and the developers of 20th and 21st century technologists. The products of those decisions, designs, and developments have changed how we understand and relate to each other.
Throughout the history of technological production, fiction has played a central role, collaborating with technologists in market production and fueling the desire for technological creation and futuristic environments. How do works of imagination—namely science fiction—help us understand the ethical questions that technological innovation poses? Science fiction is often engineered in conversation with consulting technologists; technology is often engineered in conversation with the visions created by imagineers, including writers, artists, and filmmakers. What is the dynamic between imagining as a practice of building fictional worlds, and imagining as a practice of building real technologies? What does science fiction’s vision of the future tells about the culture of technological innovation, and what does science fiction about how we understand as “the human,” even as science changes what it means to be human?
In this course, we will look critically at the concept of “the good’ and “the human” in relationship to tech, in order to understand the hopes, the challenges, and the consequences of technological production. We will also investigate the structure and the culture of the tech industry to consider how the passions, the biases, and the blind spots of those who govern and participate in its culture are built into seemingly neutral forms of technology. We will read art that engages with the complexities of technological design and its global distribution. Finally, we will investigate the relationship between art and tech to consider how humanists might participate in--and perhaps alter--the course and the culture of technology in today’s world.
In addition to exploring the genre of science fiction, this course will consider the place of humanistic inquiry, specifically literary inquiry, in the sphere of technological production. How can a humanistic inquiry like literary studies live and work alongside technological production, and what would a humanistic approach to technology look like, accomplish, enable, or perhaps block? How might humanists, and a type of culturally critical and particularly literary way of thinking, intervene into conversations about the ethics of technological production?
Required Texts:
George Orwell, 1984
Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants
Manjula Padmanabhan, Harvest
Dave Eggers, The Circle
Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus
PDFs Available on Canvas:
George Saunders, “The Braindead Megaphone”
Andrew Marantz, “Antisocial”
John Cassidy, “Me Media”
E.M. Forster The Machine Stops
Plato, Republic
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Wole Talabi, “Necessary and Sufficient Conditions”
Jean Luc Nancy “The Intruder”
Rebecca Roanhorse “Welcome To Your Authentic Indian Experience”
Homer G. Wells War of the Worlds (broadcast version)
Film/TV:
“The Social Dilemma” and “Coded Bias” are streaming on Netflix. “Westworld” is currently available on HBO. “Star Trek” is streaming on Netflix and Amazon Prime, and available for purchase. Wall-E is streaming on Disney+ and is available to rent on Amazon Prime for $2.99.
Reading Schedule and Assignment Due Dates:
Unit 1: Humans + Tech Today: The State of the Union
9/20: Introduction
9/22 John Cassidy “Me Media”
SELF INTRODUCTION DUE BY 9/22, 9PM.
Podcast episode 6
TED Talk Reading:
Read: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/07/09/listen-and-learn
Watch: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/video-the-arc-of-ted-talks
Read: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/five-key-ted-talks
9/24: Podcast 52 Released
TED TALK PRESENTATION SIGN UPS DUE HERE: https://docs.google.com/document/d/155neyX0MZ0ymdoKnvoJjn3IpM6o5T6DXEU-AOCRL6MQ/edit
9/27: The Social Dilemma (streaming, Netflix)
Podcast episode 44
9/29: George Saunders “The Brain-Dead Megaphone”
Podcast episode 33
10/1: Podcast 53 Released
10/4: Tim Wu The Attention Merchants (p1-7,108-122, 289-302, 308-317, 335-339, 348-353) OR (Intro, Total Attention Control, The Place to Be, An Absorbing Spectacle)
Podcast episode 46
Unit 2: The Culture of Technology and “The Good”
10/6: Yuval Noah Harari Homo Deus p1-21, 155-178, and p372-402. (If you have a copy of Harari’s book without page numbers, the pages correspond to: The New Human Agenda; The Storytellers; The Data Religion)
10/8: Podcast 54 Released
10/11: Plato Republic (selections); Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics
Podcast episode 2
Podcast episode 21
10/13: George Orwell 1984
Podcast episode 3
10/15: Podcast 55 Released
Unit 3: Intergalactic: Planetary
10/18: Kodwo Eshun, “Further Notes on Afrofuturism”
Podcast episode 22
10/20: Wole Talabi, “Necessary and Sufficient Conditions”
Podcast episode 4
10/22: Podcast 56 Released
10/25: Manjula Padmanabhan Harvest
Podcast episode 43
10/27: Jean Luc Nancy “The Intruder”
Podcast Episode 13, 29
10/29: Podcast 57 Released
11/1: Homer G. Wells War of the Worlds (broadcast version)
Podcast episode 7
Unit 4: Utopia/Dystopia
11/3: Westworld
Podcast episode 8
11/5: Podcast 58 Released
Journal Entries Submitted for Feedback Due, 11:59pm
Submit to Canvas
11/8: Rebecca Roanhorse “Welcome To Your Authentic Indian Experience”
Podcast episode 11
Unit 5: The Social Network
11/10: E.M Forster The Machine Stops
Podcast episode 19
11/12: Podcast 59 Released
11/15: Star Trek: The Next Generation The Measure of a Man (season 2, episode 9)
Podcast episode 1
11/17: Coded Bias (streaming, Netflix)
Podcast episode 28
11/19: Podcast 60 Released
11/22: NO CLASS, THANKSGIVING BREAK
11/25: NO CLASS, THANKSGIVING BREAK
UNIT 6 The Next Generation
11/29: Dave Eggers The Circle
Podcast Episode 5
12/1: Wall-E
Podcast episode 26
Podcast 61 Released
12/3: Final Journal Portfolio, TED Group Cover Letter/Narrative, and TED Talk Group Assessment Due by 11:59pm
SUBMIT ALL ASSIGNMENTS TO CANVAS
Office Hours:
I will hold virtual office hours on Zoom, on Mondays from 4-6. For my Monday office hours, you can drop in at any time. I will let students in on a first come, first serve basis. I also hold office hours Wednesdays from 4-6PM. If you would like to come to my Wednesday office hours, you MUST make an appointment in advance. I will accept office hours appointments on Wednesday on a first ask, first granted basis. You may additionally request an appointment. My Office Hours Zoom meeting ID allows you to sign on to join my office hours. I’m also happy to find a time to connect outside of office hours, if that time won’t work for you. Just email me M-Th.
Requests for office hours must be submitted at least 72 hours (3 days) before the requested meeting time. I cannot guarantee that I will be able to accept a request for office hours appointments with less than 72 hours of notice.
Email Policy:
I respond to emails Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm. I do not respond to emails that relate to an assignment due within 24 hours. If you have a question about an assignment that you need addressed, you must email at least 24 hours ahead of time to ask the question. I do not review email over the weekends. If you have a question about an assignment due on a Monday, you have until Thursday at 5pm to ask the question in time to get a response.
I do not respond to emails that address questions answerable by reviewing the syllabus.
Expectations:
In the following section of the syllabus, I outline some of the expectations of this class. If you don’t think you can meet these expectations, or if this class is not interesting to you, please drop the class now. If you do stay, I expect you to contribute to the community fully by completing the following:
- Course Introduction. I’d like you to help me launch this class by writing a quick introduction to you, your interests in the class, your current thinking about the ethics of technology, and how our current moment has inflected that thinking and your use of technology. Longer directions are up on the website, and I have included them below as well:
Please read the course description on the homepage. Then, please write between 250-500 words about your interest in this course, your understanding about the ethics of technology, your thinking about the interaction between humans and technology, your concerns about technology, and your hypothesis about how science fiction can help us understand, or how sci-fi interacts with, technological innovation.
This is an introductory assignment, worth 3% of your grade. All submissions completed on time will receive full credit. I will use this assignment to get to know you all and start to adjust the syllabus so I can best address your interests. You can also “like” responses by your peers that you find interesting or that you connect with.
Introduction is worth 3% of your grade (submitted/not submitted).
- Journaling2x / week, and responding to peer journals. We will be investigating stoic philosophy in this class as we interrogate the idea of “the good” when it comes to technological creation. The stoics believed, and I believe, that we don’t know what we think until we read what we have written. Writing is hard, because it pushes us to articulate and clarify the things going on in our mind. I’ll ask you to journal 2x a week and respond to a peer’s journal 2x a week. Journals will be graded as complete/incomplete, and due every Monday evening at 9pm and every Wednesday evening at 9pm. Journal entries should be 450-600 words, and should be NO MORE THAN 650 words, max. Journals start Wednesday 9/27, with the first responses due by 9/28. Thereafter, they are due every MW, with responses every T/Th, 9pm.
For these journals, you can write about anything that is related to the material that we are reading THAT WEEK ONLY. For example, you might write about a character or a theme in Dave Eggers’s book The Circle. You can write about how the ideas in the work relate to our current circumstances. You can write about how the tech or the philosophical approaches discussed in that week prompt your thinking about your life or the state of our world.
RESPONSES TO PEERS: Responses to your peers should be posted online, and are due Tuesday and Thursday by 9pm. Responses should be to a post from the day before. So, for example, if a post appears on Monday, 8/2, your response should appear Tuesday, 8/3, by 9pm.
Journaling shows us what we are actually thinking. Writing isn’t about having an idea and putting it out on the page. Writing is about figuring out what you actually think, which is what the process of writing allows. When you sit down to journal and just free write, you discover things that you didn’t know that you thought. Your brain is working on things ALL THE TIME, but often we don’t stop to understand what it is. When you give yourself the opportunity to let your brain speak to the page, (or screen) you start to see what you’ve got going on in there, and THAT is the creative act. You’re putting something out into the world that even you didn’t know existed. It is so rare in our lives that we have situations where we can kind of let our minds happen, and I hope that this opportunity to journal will allow you insight into what you are thinking, which is what we discover when we start writing about it. Don’t write what you think you already know, write to discover, like you’re playing jazz or practicing scales. Improvise. Play. Imagine.
Submitted entries that meet the length requirement and are submitted on time will be given full credit.
JOURNAL ENTRY ROUGH DRAFT FOR FEEDBACK: I will also provide feedback on at least 1 entry and up to 2 journal entries which you will submit as a rough draft. You must submit at least one journal entry for feedback by 11/5. I will grade these 2 entries.
Rough draft journal entries for review and feedback are worth 5% of your grade.
FINAL JOURNAL PORTFOLIO: I won’t grade these journals individually, but I will ask you to select the three that you think are your best and submit them as a portfolio, which I will grade. You can revise these 3 entries to be graded for the final portfolio. At the end of the quarter, you will select your top 3 journal entries for grading.
The journal entries (completed/not completed) will be worth 25% of your grade.
The 3 GRADED ENTRIES SUBMITTED AS A PORTFOLIO will be worth 25% of your grade.
No late journal responses will receive credit.
You can view your record of journal submissions here (updated weekly):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KKhZwXJ3yXMeA-ujmk5TSnOzt8sqeNcVFjsc8H_SueA/edit#gid=0
- Listening to the podcast.I will release for this class, on the topic of Ethical Technology. Guys, I thought that instead of setting you guys up for long Zoom presentations where you have to be at your computer, I’d get some major thinkers in the area of ethical tech/science fiction, and release a podcast for you. I ask that you listen, and I promise to make these podcasts relevant, exciting, and entertaining. You can listen to them while taking walks, cleaning, playing video games, or while you’re in the bath! Just listen to them. I’ll make it worth your while. If you would like to submit questions to our guests, you can submit questions to me, and I’ll ask them on the podcast, which will then be released publicly. Podcasts are released on Fridays. You can write your journal responses on the podcasts.
- Weekly discussion participation. I will hold Zoom meetings 2x/week where I’ll give a presentation on the material and then open it up for your comments and questions. I will deliver lecture material the 2nd half of class, and TED talks will be scheduled for the first half of class, followed by a Q&A session led by the presenters. This is your time to provide your ideas about the reading and to ask questions you might have. I’ll talk about the texts and provide insight into some ways of thinking about what we are reading. I expect full student participation during the Q&A and respectful engagement and attention to your peers as they are presenting. Your participation grade in class is calculated based on your participation. Participation grades are calculated beyond just attending the Zoom meeting and require active and engaged participation. An “A” for participation means providing at least 1 thoughtful comment, question, or interaction in discussion per week. Engagement below that will be calculated organically.
Participation is worth 15% of your grade.
- TED Talk Working in groups of 3-4 peers, you will prepare a TED Talk on ethics and technology that fits the theme of the week you are scheduled to present. You will think about the principles that you believe students taking ethical technology class should know, you will research the form of the TED Talk ethics, and science fiction/philosophy related content qualified for and coherent with the course goals and narrative for that week. You will include the material from that week in your presentation, and you will also introduce the class to outside material that is relevant to the topic, based on your research. You will present your talk, as a group, to the class on the Wednesday of the week you are scheduled. You will then run a Q&A for the class and open up the class for discussion. You will need to do outside research on your topic, beyond the material I provide, and consider how you will select, and present material to your audience. Talks will be recorded and may be posted to the etcalpoly.org website. Finally, you will need to consider the way in which your TED talk reflects and contributes to the significant concerns around the relationship between ethics and equity/inclusion.
Draft scripts for your TED talk are due 48 hours before you are scheduled to present. One person in the group will email me your draft. I will provide feedback on your draft. Grades will include how well you incorporate my feedback.
After the presentation, by the end of the quarter, you will also provide a cover letter explaining your choices, the narrative of your class, and how/why you selected the material you chose. Each group will collaborate on a cover letter and submit it as a group (only 1 group member needs to submit the letter for the group). In the letter, you will articulate the presentation goals, objectives, and a narrative for your talk, design a talk, and consider the goal and audience for your topic.
Group TED Talk presentation will be worth 15% of your grade.
Draft TED Talk is worth 5% of your grade.
Cover letter is due 5% of your grade
Finally, you will turn in a written account of what everyone in your group contributed, and you will grade each group member. I will not use that grade as basis for my evaluation, but I will read each account to ensure equity and participation across groups. Accounts will remain confidential. If there are multiple accounts of a group member not contributing to the work process, I will assign different grades to group members. If all group members contribute equitably in accounts, all group members will receive the same grade.
Group assessment account is worth 2% of your grade
Canvas:
This class will use Canvas. You can log on to the course website and read the class overview. You will also see that I have set up weekly responses. All assignments should be submitted through Canvas, under the “Assignments” page. All journals/responses should be submitted in the appropriate week, under the “Discussion” page.
NO LATE ASSIGNMENTS WILL BE ACCEPTED FOR CREDIT WITHOUT PRIOR REQUESTS SUBMITTED AND EXPLICITLY ACCEPTED BY ME.
*Journals or responses submitted after the 9pm deadline on the day they are due will not receive credit. All journal responses submitted before the deadline will receive full credit. Journal entries, outside of the rough draft or the 3 graded journal entry portfolio are graded as full credit/no credit.
*All synchronous meetings must be attended for the full 10 weeks to receive full credit. Any absences that do not obtain prior excuses and acceptance by me will result in lowered participation grades.
Grading Totals:
|
Self-Introduction |
3% |
|
Journal Entries over the quarter (completed/not completed |
25% |
|
Rough Draft Journal Entries, for review and feedback |
5% |
|
3 graded journal entries submitted as a portfolio |
25% |
|
Draft TED Talk Script (submitted as a group) |
5% |
|
TED Talk Group Cover Letter |
5% |
|
TED Talk Group Account |
2% |
|
Group TED Talk Presentation |
15% |
|
Participation |
15% |
KEY TO PODCAST EPISODES:
Podcast episodes correlate with numbers as follows, and each additional weekly episode will be numbered sequentially. You can find podcasts at www.etcalpoly.org, and all podcasts are available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can also stream the podcast episodes from your website by visiting the etcalpoly.org website. You can also subscribe to the podcast.
- Phoning Home
- The Good Place
- Ethical Tech Goes to College
- Tech Represents
- Data Dystopia
- Cultural Revolution
- The Meaning of Life
- Making Up Our Minds
- Science as a Human Endeavor
- The Next Generation of Technologists
- California Dreaming
- Linking In
- Biotechnically Human
- Tech Stands Up
- Podcast Takeover Series 1
- Podcast Takeover Series 2
- Podcast Takeover Series 3
- The Way Way Back Machine: A Dive into the Archive
- The Ethics of the Algorithm: digital innovation and humanistic computing
- Of the people, by the people, for the people: Public Interest Technology
- Technically Legal: Professor Jeff Ward explores the relationship between law and tech
- The Impact of Impact: Ethical and socially responsible tech investing
- Server Technology:
- Block Power: Marcus Miller on mobilizing Black voters, the 2020 Election and grassroots organizing in the age of tech
- Active Imagination: Malka Older talks humanitarianism, science fiction, and the future of democracy
- Tech Stands Up: Brad Taylor builds the new technological revolution
- How Tech is Changing Democracy Around the Globe
- The American Dream Goes Digital
- Protecting Our Tech
- The “Changing Minds” Series: Episode 1
- The “Changing Minds” Series: Episode 2
- The “Changing Minds” Series: Episode 3
- Virtually Human
- Mark Z. Jacobson Revolutionizes Climate Science
- World Building
- Haley Pavone Reinvents the Heel
- Body Technology Part 1
- Body Technology Part 2
- Persons and Things
- Natural Technology
- Climate, Chemicals, Carcinogens, Cancer
- Nintendo Nation
- Digital Justice
- Hard at Work
- Millenial Action Technology
- Network Technology
- Captivating Technology
- The Rise of the Ethical Hacker
- Chris Wexler’s Quest to Detoxify the Internet
- Explaining AI
- The Transhuman Code
Course Summary:
| Date | Details | Due |
|---|---|---|