Tag Archives: ethics

class, elective, grad, grad-s25-seminar, s25, seminar, special topic

DM-GY 9113 Design for Social Impact

The social impact of technologies is typically thought about fairly late, if ever, in the design process. Indeed, it can be difficult at design time to predict what effects technologies will have. Nevertheless, design decisions can inadvertently “lock in” particular values early on. In this course, we will draw on science & technology studies, technology design, and the arts to analyze the values embodied in technology design and to design technologies to promote positive social impact. What social and cultural values do technology designs consciously or unconsciously promote? To what degree can social impact be “built into” a technology? How can we take social and cultural values into account in design?

Instructor : Margaret Jack

Sample Syllabus

class, elective, grad, grad-s25-seminar, s25, seminar, special topic

DM-GY 9113 Race, Culture, Design & Technology

This seminar course is a survey on the work done on thinking about the politics and ethics of design and technology, particularly with regards to the politics of race and culture. Drawing from a range of fields and disciplines that study cultural and racial difference in nuanced ways: anthropology, cultural studies, Black studies, settler-colonial and indigenous studies, and postcolonial and decolonial theory, we will put discourses from these disciplines into conversation with discourses from fields that deal with materializing new ways of living and being via technology like art, design, architecture, and computer science.

Topics we will cover in the course include the history of politics and ethics in design, design justice, decolonising design, race and technology, cosmofuturisms and cosmotechnics. We will have readings that deal with subjects and contexts outside of the United States, including Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, South and East Asia.

Instructor: Ahmed Ansari