Tomorrow night I launch my technology, innovation, and design seminar for Georgetown’s .  I’d like to share the syllabus here.

The class is required for LDT students.  Its goal is to expose those students to a variety of intellectual approaches to technology and innovation.  Accordingly I’ve cued up philosophy, linguistics, history, antiracism, business, feminism, science fiction, medicine, sociology, information studies, and a role-playing game.

Students have a lot of work to do.  There’s a barrage of reading, to which they respond through weekly writing and discussion. They have two midterm projects (analyzing one tech; an annotated bibliography) in addition to a final work. Each will also present on one technology, introducing and analyzing it.

I will keep my own presentations to a minimum. The goal is less for me to rant at students and more for us to think together to build collaborative understanding.  I encourage students to drive the discussion in general, and also to bring in their individual professional work and personal interests.

Overall I think it’s a challenging, rich, and wild ride.

Here’s the schedule.  Books follow at the end:

August 24

Topic: Introductions

Readings:

• Plato, excerpt from (the story of Theuth)


• Etymologies (just p. 1)


• The huge technological takeoff (, )

Exercises:

• A quick sketch of technology history


• Exploration of key concepts,


• Signing up for tech presentations () and using this as a prompt:

August 31

Topic: the history of technology

• Reading: How We Got To Now 1

September 7

Topic: the history of technology

• Reading: How We Got To Now 2

Student tech presentations:

September 14

Topic: Imagining innovation

Readings:

• Forster, “The Machine Stops” (   ()
  
  


• Bush, “As We May Think” (
  
  


• Schroeder, “Noon in the Antilibrary” (
  
  
  
  
  
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• Atul Gawande, “Slow Ideas”

Student tech presentations:

September 21

Topic: how innovations spread, 1

• 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)


• Referenced: Moore, Crossing the Chasm

Student tech presentations:

September 28

Topic: how innovations spread, 2

• Reading: Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 5th Edition: chapters 7-11


• Christensen, Raynor, McDonald, “What Is Disruptive Innovation?”

Student tech presentations:

October 1: innovation analysis due

October 5

Topic: how to nurture innovation

Readings:

• Jon Gernter, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (part one, chapters 1-11)


• Rosen, “Prologue”.


• Rage Against the Machine: Technology, Rebellion, and the Industrial Revolution, pp. 1-36; the primary sources are fun, too.

Student tech presentations:

October 12

Topic: simulating technological and social possibilities through Reacting to the Past

Readings:

• Rely on Rage Against the Machine: Technology, Rebellion, and the Industrial Revolution.


• Your character biography (emailed to each of you)


• Your faction  advisory (emailed to each of you)


• Video clips (,)

Character assignments: TBD

October 19

Topic: justice and innovation, or: does technology have a politics?

Readings:

• Benjamin, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, 1-96.


• Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” ()

Student tech presentations:

October 26

Topic: Justice and innovation, 2

Reading:

• Benjamin, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, 97-end.


• Lepore, “The Disruption Machine”

Student tech presentations:

November 2

Topic: beyond the western world

Reading: Digital Middle East, selections:

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   1. Zayani, “Mapping the Digital Middle East: Trends and Disjunctions”, 1-32
   
   
   2. Any four (4) chapters of your choosing, based on your interests.
   
   
   
   

Student tech presentations:

November 9

Topic: technology and society

• Rosen, “Changes in the Atmosphere”


• Judy Wajcman, “Feminist Theories of Technology”


• Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology”

Student tech presentations:

November 16

Topic: futures

• Student presentations


• Two short readings, to be determined by the class

November 19: annotated bibliography due

November 23

Topic: futures

• Student presentations


• Reviewing key concepts,

November 30 LAST DAY OF CLASS

December 17 FINAL PROJECT DUE

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Print readings, offline, which you need to obtain

Ruha Benjamin, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code.

Jon Gernter, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation.

Steven Johnson, How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made The Modern World.

Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 5th Edition.

Mohamed Zayani, ed., Digital Middle East State and Society in the Information Age .

Recommended readings

James Bridle, New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future.

Charles Fadel, Wayne Holmes, Maya Bialik, Artificial Intelligence In Education: Promises and Implications for Teaching and Learning.

James E McClellan and Harold Dorn, Science and Technology in World History, third edition.

Carlota Perez, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages

Alex Roland, War and Technology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press)

Shoshana Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.