Advanced Seminar in Film & Video (443-0-20)

Topic

Digital Dystopias

Instructors

Nathaniel Rossi

Meeting Info

Annie May Swift Hall 109: Tues 3:00PM - 5:50PM

Overview of class

Silicon Valley runs on technological utopianism. Their vision of techno-capitalism suggests that a top-down approach to technology innovation can and will solve the ever-growing list of problems facing modern society. As such, this graduate seminar seeks to critique Silicon Valley's dominant philosophy of "Californian ideology," or the idea that private sector, networked technology and innovation is inevitable and will eclipse the power of the people. By exploring the history of surveillance infrastructures, data collection, and machine learning/labor automation through a humanistic lens, this seminar will consider questions such as, how has new media adapted surveillance strategies that date back to Jeremy Bentham's panoptic designs? What precedents are there for the datafication of identity? What forces have prompted the everyday to become measurable data points and to what end? What are the material consequences of the rapid ascent of artificial intelligence in relation to the environment, labor, and how humans learn and create? While examining these questions, specific attention will be paid to the role of race, class, gender, sexuality, citizenship/borders, and ability in relation to the production, implementation, and advancement of digital media and technologies. In addition to offering an introduction to surveillance/data studies and critical AI studies, in the concluding weeks of the seminar we will take a techno futurist approach that considers alternatives to the technological determinism preached by Silicon Valley and ask what a community-driven approach to technological innovation might look like.