Courses

The idea that technology––in particular information technologies––is democratizing is a truism whose origins go back to the postwar era. With the rise of digitization––i.e. the Internet, social media––this utopianism has accelerated, promising user autonomy, decentralization, and new forms of engagement and participation that will inevitably shape community and make the world a better place. This course seeks to problematize these claims by examining theories of digitization, democracy, and technical society. It questions the universalism that underlies such utopianism––in particular with regards to matters of race, gender, and ethnicity––approaching technologies as socially symbolic meanings that both build upon and produce new forms of knowledge, potentially engendering political inequality and anti-democracy. Welcoming students from departments across the university, the course aims to generate a cross-disciplinary dialogue about these issues in relation to art, culture, and society.