Technology has always been a part of human existence. Today though, says the experimental physicist, Ursula M. Franklin, technology has large-scale effects on culture itself. Ursula Franklin is an experimental physicist, University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, a former board member of the National Research Council and the Science Council of Canada, and a companion of the Order...
Ursula Franklin
Ursula Martius Franklin was a Canadian metallurgist, activist, research physicist, author, and educator who taught at the University of Toronto for more than 40 years. Franklin is best known for her writings on the political and social effects of technology. She was the author of The Real World of Technology, which is based on her 1989 Massey Lectures; The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map, a collection of her papers, interviews, and talks; and Ursula Franklin Speaks: Thoughts and Afterthoughts, containing 22 of her speeches and five interviews between 1986 and 2012. Franklin was a practising Quaker and actively worked on behalf of pacifist and feminist causes. She wrote and spoke extensively about the futility of war and the connection between peace and social justice. Franklin received numerous honours and awards, including the Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case for promoting the equality of girls and women in Canada and the Pearson Medal of Peace for her work in advancing human rights. In 2012, she was inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame. A Toronto high school, Ursula Franklin Academy, as well as Ursula Franklin Street on the University of Toronto's St. George campus, have been named in her honor.
Ursula's list
Ursula Franklin is one of my all-time favorite thinkers about both the obvious and obscured parts of our technological world.
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
A witty, often terrifying that chronicles our transform…
Humanities in the Machine - Blain Smith
There is something quietly remarkable about the people who built the foundations of modern computing. Not their technical achievements, though those are extraordinary. What is remarkable is where they came from before they ever touched a machine.
The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves
Leading scientific theorist W. Brian Arthur puts forth …
About — Every Object an Archive
We interview people about their experiences with technological objects that were once everywhere, but are now being replaced or redesigned. We are interested in the physical experience of living with these objects, their handfeel and relationships to our bodies. We are also interested in how they shaped our habits, relationships, and ways of being. Technologies are more than physical objects: whole worlds of infrastructure, process, policy and culture are built around them.
zach lieberman on Twitter / X
Today I was able to weave a line from Myron Krueger in a talk I gave : Computation is the medium of our lifetimes - it’s not just a technical medium but a cultural medium as well. We should explore the culture of computation.— zach lieberman (@zachlieberman) April 10, 2024
Anthropomorphism Is Breaking Our Ability to Judge AI
Tech Policy Press fellow James Ball asks, how should we interact with a technology designed to ‘speak’ with us on what appear to be human terms?
Joanna Russ- SF and Technology as Mystification
Talk about technology, long familiar to science-fiction readers and writers, is getting popular in Academia too. Particularly interesting to humanists is the connection between technology and whatever their own particular subject happens to be; I've attended three such formal symposia in the last five years, six including SF conventions, and including informal discussions among students, in writing classes, SF classes, and elsewhere, somewhere between fifty and sixty.
Topics — Real Life
ABOUT TOPICS: Since we began Real Life in the summer of 2016, we’ve run many essays across a range of topics, with a particular focus on the personal and cultural implications of living with technology. Our aim is not to track the news cycle so much as the longstanding social issues that inform and transcend it. We wanted to make it easier to read and explore Real Life beyond our chronological archive, so we’ve created these Topics to gather in one place the work we’ve published on some key themes. More Topics will be added to this page over time.
Technology is Not Values Neutral: Ending the Reign of Nihilistic Design
We fail to take tech seriously when we do not grasp its full impact on humans
The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology, Second Edition
“In an age in which the inexhaustible power of scientific technology makes all things possible, it remains to be seen where we will draw the line, where we will be able to say, here are possibilities that wisdom suggest we avoid.” First published to great acclaim in 1988, Langdon Winner’s groundbreaking exploration of the political, social, and philosophical implications of technology is timelier than ever. He demonstrates that choices about the kinds of technical systems we build and use are actually choices about who we want to be and what kind of world we want to create—technical decisions are political decisions, and they involve profound choices about power, liberty, order, and justice. A seminal text in the history and philosophy of science, this new edition includes a new chapter, preface, and postscript by the author.
Technocracy References
References and Revisions “Should Scientists and Engineers Run Society?” References [1] Wikipedia: “Technocracy.” [2] Academic Paper: Gunnell, John G. "The technocratic image and the theory of technocracy." Technology and culture 23.3 (1982): 392-416. [3] Academic Paper: Oh, Kyunghwan. "A non-co...
