Starting my technology and innovation seminar at Georgetown

Greetings from the start of fall 2024, when the academic year lurches into high gear.  I’m teaching two classes this term, and recently posted about one.  Today I’d like to describe the other, my technology and innovation seminar, which just kicked off on Thursday.

In this required class, Learning, Design, and Technology students immerse themselves in multiple ways of thinking about and doing both technology and innovation.  We explore those topics through history, imagination, sociology, economics, social justice, critical theory, philosophy, gender studies, and business.

It’s a class I know well, having first taught it in 2019.  I love almost everything about it: the topics, the approaches we take, students’ questioning and learning. I like tweaking it each time.

The mechanics of the class are much the same as they have been.  Each live session is a mix of discussion, my presentations (brief), and student presentations (each on a technology of interest to them).  Students write a short analysis of one tech or innovation early on, framed by Roger’s innovation theory, then start working on a major project analyzing one tech or innovation for education, which they can present as a scholarly paper, a podcast, a video, a game, a Miro board, or other format if I approve of it.  They have to assemble and annotate a scholarly sources bibliography as well.

This time we’re not playing a game, mostly because the logistics are daunting with a larger class.  I’ve also cut out end-of-term presentations, which look a lot of time and which students seemed to great with much dread and little benefit. I’m expanding our use of a keywords wiki Google Doc, with the students having access to it from the start, adding to it as we go, and hopefully having the whole list of terms filled out and familiar to all in December.   I continue to use discussion board threads, and have once again revised the questions I pose there.

I’m emphasizing two themes this term: AI and climate change. Students will read about AI, use various forms of it in and beyond class, then discuss its implications for their work. I’ll bring climate change in at opportune times; still considering some potential readings.

I do have some open spots on the syllabus, as you’ll see below.  For non-US and non-European perspectives I’m not sure what to focus on. I’d love for a good Chinese reading or sources for Africa. For AI I have a set of readings, but need more.  And for the future of technology I have all kinds of ideas, and am now torn between the Weinersmiths’ Soonish (which our online book club read in 2018) and Ray Kurzweil’s new book, The Singularity is Nearer.  Happy to hear your thoughts, and yes, one option is to get students doing the finding and selecting.

Here’s the syllabus as it stands now: Thursday, August 29, 2024 – Introductions

Readings:

• Plato, excerpt from Phaedrus  (the story of Theuth)
• Etymologies (On “tek”  just p1)
• The huge technological takeoff (one, two)

Exercises:

• Introducing ourselves by technologies
• Exploration of technology keywords  
• Signing up for tech presentations
• Questions to consider about a technology:

Thursday, September 5, 2024 – Histories of technology, I

• Reading: How We Got To Now, part 1: to p. 124
• Introduction to printing press as transformative technology

Thursday, September 12, 2024 – Histories of technology, II

• Reading: How We Got To Now, part 2: to the end.

Student tech presentations:

Thursday, September 19, 2024 – Imagining Innovation

Readings:

• Bush, “As We May Think” (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/)
• Schroeder, “Noon in the Antilibrary” (https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611829/noon-in-the-antilibrary/)
  • Here’s a good, quick intro to deepfakes 
• Atul Gawande, “Slow Ideas” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/29/slow-ideas

• Forster, “The Machine Stops” (https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/Machine_stops.pdf)  (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops)

Student tech presentations:

Thursday, September 26, 2024 – How innovations spread, I

• Readings: Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 5th Edition: 1-52; 72-3; 87-218  (chapter 1; chapter 2 through the Miracle Rice story, the STOP AIDS story, and from “Opinion Leaders” on; chapters 3-5)

Student tech presentation

Monday, September 30 – analysis of one innovation due

Thursday, October 3, 2024 – How innovations spread, II

Readings:

• Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 5th Edition: chapters 7-11
• Christensen, Raynor, McDonald, “What Is Disruptive Innovation?” https://hbr.org/2015/12/what-is-disruptive-innovation

Student tech presentations

Thursday, October 10, 2024 – Justice and innovation, I

Readings:

• Benjamin, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, 1-96.
• Lepore, “The Disruption Machine”

Student tech presentations

Thursday, October 17, 2024 – Justice and innovation, II

Reading:

• Benjamin, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, 97-end.
• Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (one copy)

Student tech presentations

Thursday, October 24, 2024 – Beyond America and Europe

Reading: TBA

Student tech presentation

Thursday, October 31, 2024 – Critiquing technology

• Ursula LeGuin, “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.”
• Judy Wajcman, “Feminist Theories of Technology”
• Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology”
• A fine and friendly podcast series about Heidegger’s big book

Student tech presentations 

Monday, November 4– annotated bibliography due

Thursday, November 7, 2024 – AI, I

Readings and exercises

• Seán Clarke, Dan Milmo and Garry Blight, “How AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Bard work – visual explainer“
• Gwo-Jen Hwang and Nian-Shing Chen, “Editorial Position Paper: Exploring the Potential of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Education: Applications, Challenges, and Future Research Directions”
• Maha Bali, “What I Mean When I Say Critical AI Literacy”
• Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and “Shmargaret Shmitchell,” “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? ”

Student presentations

Thursday, November 14, 2024 – AI, II

Readings: TBA

exercises

Student tech presentation

Thursday, November 21, 2024 – technology and innovation futures, I

Readings: TBA

Student tech presentation

Thursday, November 28, 2024 – fall recess

Thursday, December 5, 2024 – technology and innovation futures, II

Readings: TBA

Review our keywords

Friday, December 13 – final project due