Technology and Human Values

#ImWithSusan: Finding Friends in the Black Mirror “Nosedive”

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Black Mirror, Film, Film Reviews, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Technology and Human Values, Television 0 Comments

[NOTE: This is the first in a series of reviews of Black Mirror. These posts DO include spoilers. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know!] All of the episodes of Charlie Brooker‘s brilliant sci-fi series Black Mirror take place in a near-distant future, but in the first installment of the third season (“Nosedive”) that future is far…

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Not Every Idea Needs a Tool, But Every Tool Needs an Idea

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Digital Humanities, Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, Technology and Human Values 0 Comments

Last semester, I conducted a test-run on a new assignment I had devised for my courses– the “Technology and Human Values” project— and I was, quite frankly, floored by the work that students did for it. The basic assignment is for students to work in groups of four or fewer to devise a merely-possible technological solution…

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Twitter: Now With More Characters, Less Character

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Technology and Human Values 0 Comments

Twitter has changed a lot over the last few years, but until recently there was one inviolable rule to which all users were obliged: tweets must be limited to 140 characters or less. Because a computer “character” is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme– letter, number, punctuation mark, or whitespace– the…

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Email

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, Technology and Human Values 0 Comments

I can’t quite remember exactly when email became such a nuisance in my life, but it must have been a long time ago now since I can barely remember it not being a nuisance anymore.  I think I got my first (AOL) email address in 1994.  Then, the familiar modem-screeching and you’ve got mail! alert were the…

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Forgetting

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Digital Humanities, Philosophy, Politics, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, Technology and Human Values 0 Comments

I dedicate a significant amount of time in my courses to thinking with students about our “digital selves” and our “digital lives.” Most students– most people, for that matter– tend to think of the aggregate data that constitute their digital selves (social media profiles, Google searches, Netflix or Amazon preferences, banking transactions, medical records, online…

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Technology and Human Values

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Digital Humanities, Ethics, Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, Politics, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, Technology and Human Values 0 Comments

If this were a post on Buzzfeed or Upworthy or some other such listicle-driven site, the thumbnail caption would read: “You won’t BELIEVE the AMAZING things these COLLEGE STUDENTS did in their PHILOSOPHY class! Check it out!” That would be a 100% true description, but I will attempt to be more measured in what follows….

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#Hashtags

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Ethics, Philosophy, Politics, Public Philosophy, Technology and Human Values 0 Comments
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