Gregory's Server@mhoye It's a cliche, but what cult anth is good at is making the familiar strange and showing that things could be otherwise, so I think that would be my main objective in a course like this.
That means I'd include a fair amount of history of technology. The volume Your Computer is on Fire is a good entry point into this literature that really drives home the urgency of taking a historical perspective: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10993.001.0001
There are numerous ethnographies of computing related topics that I would draw on for certain themes (depending on course objectives and student interests): hackers (Coleman, Kelty, Dunbar-Hester), labor (Irani, Amrute), datafication (Schüll), recommender systems (Seaver), materiality and environmental impacts (Hogan, Monserrate), and many more.
My colleague Rodrigo Ochigame gave a very nice keynote last year systematizing the various contributions of anthropology to these kinds of debates. I'll follow up if it turns out that is public somewhere.
A few other useful entry points: Digital STS (https://digitalsts.net/), Digital Keywords (https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400880553), Defining Concepts of Digital Society (https://policyreview.info/archives/2019/issue-4).
@mhoye here are some details on Rodrigo's talk called "Anthropological Strategies for Reimagining the Digital": https://antropologen.nl/anthropology-day-2023-keynote-lectures/
My notes:
- 1970s: observing human-machine interactions: Lucy Suchman
- 1990s: questioning artificial "intelligence" and "life": Diana Forsythe; Stefan Helmreich
- 2000s: studying virtual worlds: Tom Boellstorff; _Race in Cyberspace_
- exposing the hidden labor behind automated systems
- investigating unintended consequences of algorithmic systems
- studying material infrastructures and environmental impacts of digital infrastructures
- comparing diverse uses and designs of digital media around the world: Payal Arora
- thinking with activists, hackers, free & open source software advocates
- adopting digital methods and interactive media in ethnographic research
- studying how digital technologies could have been designed otherwise
(apparently I got distracted toward the end...)
@mhoye here are some details on Rodrigo's talk called "Anthropological Strategies for Reimagining the Digital": https://antropologen.nl/anthropology-day-2023-keynote-lectures/
My notes:
- 1970s: observing human-machine interactions: Lucy Suchman
- 1990s: questioning artificial "intelligence" and "life": Diana Forsythe; Stefan Helmreich
- 2000s: studying virtual worlds: Tom Boellstorff; _Race in Cyberspace_
- exposing the hidden labor behind automated systems
- investigating unintended consequences...