Skip to 0 minutes and 3 seconds Human beings have always used technologies. But ‘What’s the difference between a hammer and the technologies that we use today, like smartphones, 3-D printers, self-driving cars and medical implants or even robots or teaching a class?’ In almost every aspect of life technologies play an important role to help us to do things. They expand our capacities and they even do things on their own. Technology has made life easier, but at the same time, it has also made life more complex. And the impact of technology can reach far beyond the intentions of the designers and the intentions of their users.
Skip to 0 minutes and 35 seconds So ‘How would you understand this influence of technology on human beings and on society and how to deal with it in a responsible way?’ These will be the questions that we will work on in this course. We will show you how to analyze the relationship between technology and society. We will also show you how to use this analysis to help you design new technologies in a good way. Many people believe that the main question regarding technology is ‘Whether technology control society or if society can still control technology?’ We will give you an alternative approach in which we recognize that technology always helps us understand the world and shapes our lives, our society, our world.
Skip to 1 minute and 12 seconds But an approach in which we can also take responsibility for its influence, in which we can raise ethical questions. In this view technologies, act as mediators of practices and experiences, allowing us to interact with the world around us. Within this approach of technological mediation, we can analyze the influence of technology on human life. And what’s more, we can use this approach for the ethical evaluation and the design of new technologies like artificial intelligence, which will play a central role in the last week of this course. The DesignLab of the University of Twente will be an inspiring, background, inspiring setting for this course. In the DesignLab, we connect science and society through design, combining ‘High tech and Human touch’.
Skip to 1 minute and 53 seconds The slogan of the entire University of Twente. We really hope that you will join our course.
