851-0450-00L Digital Ethics and Politics
| Semester | Autumn Semester 2023 |
| Lecturers | M. Boenig-Liptsin |
| Periodicity | non-recurring course |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Abstract | This course introduces students to the ethical, cultural, and political contexts and consequences of digital technologies (big data, computing, Artificial Intelligence) and equips them with an interpretive social science toolkit for critical thinking and responsible action in a digital world. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Learning objective | By the end of the course, students will be able to identify issues of ethical or political significance around digital technologies, analyze them in systematic ways using key concepts from the study of technology and society and deploy their analysis to intervene in and shape public debates about issues of importance to them. Learning Objective 1: Students will have developed a command of the key interpretive social science concepts ("STS lenses") for the analysis of the ethics and politics of digital societies. Assessment 1: Analytic essay (30% of final grade): take-home, graded according to a rubric Learning Objective 2: Students will be able to identify their own ethical positionality in contexts of digital societies. Assessment 2: 4 reflection exercises (10% of final grade): 500 words each, graded for completion Learning Objective 3: Students will be able to intervene in and shape the public debate about an ethical or political issue in contexts of digital societies by producing effective communications using their situated perspectives and systematic arguments. Assessment 3: Course project (60% of final grade), consisting of: • Individual write-up of approximately 750-1000 words (30%), graded according to a rubric • Participation in mock debate (10%) • Team synthesis (10%) • Team presentation (10%) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Content | Data-driven services and artificial intelligence-powered processes inform how people act in and know the world. These new tools, systems, and infrastructures have profound consequences for how people think of themselves, relate to one another, organize collective life, and envision desirable futures. This course examines how data and computing are entangled with diverse human contexts (histories, institutions, political cultures, and material bases) and ethics (values, norms, identities, and visions of the good). We will bring frameworks and methods from Science, Technology and Society (STS), such as cross-national comparison, co-production, and controversy studies, and historically-grounded perspectives to bear on topics that include: ● The dynamic relationship between data, computing, democracy, and law; ● The role of data and computing in the development of scientific and political expertise and public reason ● Transformations in forms of collective life (e.g. sensors, machine learning, and artificial intelligence and changing landscapes of labor and industry) ● Transformations in how life is governed with data and computing tools (e.g. how governments and corporations provide public goods such as health and security to citizens) ● Local and global approaches to the governance of data and computing technologies ● The meaning of responsibility in data science and computing practice amid shifts in human subjects, community, and political institutions | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Competencies |
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