PART 2 (Week 5)
Watch this narrated powerpoint
In this video, I go over ways that technology has produced and reshaped ways we think of what it means to be ‘human’, ‘male/female’, ‘racialised’ and ‘dis/abled’:
Watch this short video
NB: if you need to reduce your time spent on this module you can skip this activity.
In this short film, Sunaura Taylor and Judith Butler examine what it means to ‘take a walk’ and what are the conditions that are necessary to allow us to do so.
After watching the film, write down 3 key ideas proposed in the video. What does this teach us about the relationship between technology and bodies?
Then, read this annotated paper by Bloomfield et al. (2010):
Bodies, technologies and action possibilities
As you read the article, try to draw connections between this concept of ‘affordances’ and certain theoretical viewpoints explored in the previous theme. How does this concept relate to Social Construction of Technology? Actor-Network Theory? Technological Determinism?
Identify examples that interrogate the reality of a ‘frontier’ between your body and technology.
Interrogate whether these represent examples of technology that
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- ‘define’ your understanding of your body (technoscientific knowledge)
- modify or shape your body (permanently, temporarily)
- support your body in what it can do
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For each of these, interrogate what the conditions of use of this technology are: who has access to it? in what circumstances does the technology become obsolete, useless, unusable?
Place these examples in the dedicated group Mural (“Theme 2 activity 2 (week 5)”) for discussion with your group. If you’d rather have a more ‘unstructured’ discussion (less ‘analysis’, more ‘summary’) with your group, you can instead write down some talking points.
Psst… have you completed your feedback for the first peer assessment? If not, it’s this way!
Confused about a concept, or wanting to engage? Drop a comment below!