OUR LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
- We’ll think expansively, historically, and speculatively about what constitutes networks and technologies
- We’ll consider how network infrastructures embody particular ideologies, and how they shape human (and non-human) identity, agency, interpersonal relationships, labor, thought, and creative expression
- We’ll identify networks that can serve or surveill us in our own lives — in our work, our leisure, our social relationships, and so forth
- We’ll examine the social and community implications of network design and construction, and explore methods to improve the equity, health, and wellbeing of networked societies
- We’ll learn how to assess the various affordances and limitations, strengths and weaknesses, of different network infrastructures, and the politics and values they embody
- We’ll test the limits of our networks, create targeted network interventions, and “creatively misuse” networks to determine how they might serve purposes for which they weren’t intended
- We’ll explore the speculative potential of sociotechnical ecosystems, from building power with movement to futurism
- We’ll develop skills of critical reading; critical, technical, and experimental writing; network ethnography; participant observation; policy analysis; program evaluation; and basic infrastructural thinking
CODE+ LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Students will be able to…
- use computation as a tool to enhance their liberal arts education — to better analyze, communicate, create and learn
- engage in project-based and collaborative learning that utilizes computational/algorithmic thinking
- gain a broader understanding of the historical and social factors leading to the increasing presence of computational systems in our lives
- work through the social and political implications of/embedded within computational technologies and develop an accompanying ethical framework
- appreciate the challenges of equity and access posed by increased reliance on computational technologies as well as their potential to reinforce existing inequalities in society
- think critically about the ways they and others interact with computation including understanding its limits from philosophical, logical, mathematical and public policy perspectives
- understand the intrinsic relationship between the physical world, analog environments and digital experiences
