Stage 1: Topic Selection Video
For stage 1, you will choose your topic and create a short 3-5 minute narration over a PowerPoint describing your artifact.
Instructions
Choose a specific technological artifact (or interconnected set of artifacts) or form of technology whose impacts, biases, and political properties you can study by observing firsthand how people in the world use it. Your choice should be a primary source, some form of immediate, firsthand technology that you can observe directly. It should be original and unique, chosen from the categories below, and not be simply something like a smart phone.
Possible topic categories include:
· Household Items and Tools: These would include forms of technology used in a home. Included here could be things like a vacuum cleaner, a steam mop, a tool for fixing or building things, an interior or exterior lighting system, appliances, pieces of entertainment systems. Be sure to pick a specific brand and model since all vacuums, for instance, are not designed the same way. They can be items used in your own home by your family or in the home of someone you know. Make sure you have been able to observe their actual use.
· Transportation and Infrastructure: These would include technologies people use to get around and systems that deliver specific locale services. Examples would include a specific car, truck, tractor, bus, train, airplane, a water/sewer system, a set of electrical towers, a dam, a sewage plant or system, a snowplow, a UPS truck, etc. This should be something you can see with your own eyes in its actual context where you live.
· Workplace Technology: This would include artifacts and digital technology found in the workplace. Examples would be things like staplers, copiers, labelers, mail sorters, forensic microscopes, accounting software, medical software, medical and dental tools, learning management systems, customer management software.
Once you have chosen your topic, create a 3-5 minute narration over a PowerPoint describing your artifact, why you are interested in examining it further, and some of your thoughts about why this is an appropriate topic for a class on technology and culture. In your video, please make sure to cover the following questions, and feel free to include additional thoughts as appropriate.
1. What are you planning to study?
2. Where is it located? If a digital form, where are its creators located?
3. Why is this technology interesting to you personally?
4. Why is it an appropriate choice to talk about its impacts, biases or technological politics? Please see the readings and other assignments from Week 3 to help you figure out how to talk about this question.
Format
Your video should be about 3-5 minutes long and formatted as an MP4, MOV, or WMV. If you cannot create a video, please contact your instructor for an alternative way to fulfill this assignment's requirements.