Technologies of Persistence

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Do you find yourself thinking about the end of the world more often than you used to? Does the potential of an apocalypse fill you with dread? With questions? With hope? What will it take for civilization to persist in the face of the cataclysmic shifts that many agree are on the horizon? And would that civilization be any place you want to live in? If you are looking for answers to these questions, this might be the course for you. Technologies of Persistence will focus on three areas of inquiry during our semester together, each centered on one particular notion or question of technological persistence in the face of unknown futures. First, what technologies have persisted over time, are truly essential for human civilization, and why? Technologies that fall into this category are things like the wheel, or a clock, or antibiotics. They are the cornerstones of civilization that make life possible, sustainable, and bearable for humans on planet earth. Our initial exploration will look at the history and social context of these kinds of technologies and what makes them both stable and stabilizing. A second category of persistence that we will examine encompasses the technologies that should not or might not deserve to persist or actively threaten humankind. Identifying technologies that somehow make our lives worse is difficult because they are frequently hidden from view, come with trade-offs that we are often unwilling to make, and are protected by powerful forces who benefit from our ignorance. These technologies might include things like weapons of mass destruction, human trafficking (which is enabled by our dependence on global shipping), AI, or certain kinds of financial structures and instruments. We will learn to identify potential candidates for ‘sunsetting’ or ‘de-iteration’ and critique their costs and benefits to determine which technologies we believe should persist and in what form. The final category of technologies of persistence are those which will help humanity persist in the face of the tremendous social and environmental forces that threaten our existence. Where should humanity concentrate its collective effort if it is to advance the technologies it needs to live sustainably into the future? How do we want to live? What technologies will help us persist? What forces are acting against those goals? These important questions will help us chart the course for humanity’s future, in whatever form it may take. This course fulfills the CCT methods requirement. 1) Futures and foresight methods are a class of design methods aimed at helping businesses, policy-makers (such as governments and NGOs), and communities understand the future impacts of their decisions from social, economic, and technical perspectives. 2) Students will gain familiarity with 6-8 different futuring methods by participating in and planning futures workshops on topics related to “technological persistence.” 3) As design methods, futuring approaches are intended to help stakeholders surface their assumptions, reach consensus, choose between available options, and understand the likely impacts of decisions. 4) Design methods differ from other methodologies depending on the context and the type of design methods employed. In product development, design methods are focused on creating and iterating on products or services, based on data obtained from other research methods (either qualitative or quantitative). In some cases, design methods (and FFM in particular) can serve as the basis for qualitative data about a particular group of stakeholders.