This week’s topics:
This week’s guest speakers were from a collective called The Tech We Want. The Tech We Want aims to empower a new wave of leaders, companies, and technologies that are build on inclusivity, mutualism, sustainability, accountability, and responsible innovation.
Emily Best, the founder and CEO of Seed&Spark spoke on behalf of The Tech We Want and presented A People’s History of Tech.
A People’s History of Tech, supported by the Tech We Want, aims to build a more just and representative history of technology, so we can architect a more just, shared future. Through storytelling they hope to move away from “lone genius history of tech” narrative and towards a reframing of the history of tech with an emphasis on people’s involvement with tech.
They work on “building a living artifact, sharing the human impact of technology, and harnessing our joint point for the future of tech citizenship.”
Their timeline of the mobile phone invites people to share their experiences and stories with emerging technologies and “explore themes and personal histories.” The timeline online also allows readers to take action in ensuring technology serves the people.
When designing the timeline experience, the team asked themselves, what do we need to seed on the tech timeline to get people to participate in a meaningful way? They determined they needed to see the timeline in a way that will make other people excited, and they needed an editorial lens.
In class, students had the opportunity to read and interact with the timeline. Large sticky notes with prompts invited people to write their own stories and add them to the timeline. As people added their personal touch to the timeline, the audience’s attention shifted from reading the historical events to the personal stories. The timeline project not only acted as a database, but it is also a physical timeline, a digital experience, a multi-media interactive installation, and a facilitation tool.
Emily then led us through a class activity to create a potential next generation experience that is interactive and adds to the digital archive of A People’s History of Tech. Students were prompted to identify what they wanted the audience to think, feel, and do and had to come up with an idea.