Degree | Type | Year | Semester |
---|---|---|---|
2500246 Philosophy | OT | 3 | 2 |
2500246 Philosophy | OT | 4 | 2 |
There are none.
The goal of this subject is to provide tools in order to think critically about technology, and to put them in practice through the situated analysis of specific artefacts and technological systems.
Smartphones, razor-wire, surveillance cameras, ventilators, computers, cruise ships, containers, biometric passports, diggers, electricity networks, transgenic food, high-speed trains, sewing machines, condoms, drones, rubber bullets, nuclear power stations, pliers...
How to think philosophically about the material constitution of the worlds we inhabit? How does technology embody social relations, ideas and values? How does it materialize power relations? What role does technology play in the construction of bodies, feelings, identidies, and subjectivities? What ethical, political, ecological and ontological issues are at stake?
The tool-box that will be deployed and put into use during the course contains conceptual instruments, empirical materials and analytical techniques that come from different places. The reflections about technology from the philosophical tradition will be combined with perspectives from disciplines such as history, sociology, anthropology or the social studies of science and technology, as well as other engaged analyses and practices coming from outside academia.
1. What is technology? Critical Genealogy of a Concept
2. Tools, Machines and Systems: On the Modes of Existence of Technical Objects
3. Design: The Social Shaping of Technology
4. Interactions: Agency, Delegation and Situated Actions
5. Subjectivation: Gestures, Emotions and Identities
6. Intersections: Gender, Race and Class
7. Tecnopolitics: Materiality, Power and Forms of Life
The subject combines theoretical classes with discussion seminars around selected readings. Each week will have a theoretical session and a seminar. Therefore, it is expected from students a serious engagement with readings and an active participation in the collective discussion.
Eath topic will deal with one or several philosophical, historical, anthropological or sociological perspectives about technology, that will always be discussed in relation to specific and situated tools, artefacts or techical systems. Further bibliographical references for each of the topics will be published in the campus virtual.
15 minutes in one of the sessions will be devoted to the teaching evaluation polls.
Annotation: Within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.
Title | Hours | ECTS | Learning Outcomes |
---|---|---|---|
Type: Directed | |||
Theoretical classes | 23 | 0.92 | 2, 1, 24, 9, 10, 11, 14, 21 |
Type: Supervised | |||
Discussion Seminars | 22 | 0.88 | 2, 1, 6, 24, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 5, 4, 14, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22 |
Supervision | 3 | 0.12 | 3, 8, 18, 17, 25 |
Type: Autonomous | |||
Reading and autonomous work | 48 | 1.92 | 2, 1, 3, 8, 9, 10, 18, 11, 15, 19, 17, 21, 22, 25 |
The assessment will consist in:
A) A final essay (40%), the topic of which will be chosen by the student and agreed with the professor. The format of the final essay will be announced at the beginning of the course.
B) Two written assignments (25% + 25%). The format of these assignments will be announced at the beginning of the course.
C) The active participation in the discussion seminars (10%) through activities such as the presentation and analysis of texts, the moderation of the debate, the contribution to collective debate or the elaboration of reviews of the discussion. This activity cannot be reassessed.
In the event that tests or exams cannot be taken onsite, they will be adapted to an online format made available through the UAB’s virtual tools (original weighting will be maintained). Homework, activities and class participation will be carried out through forums, wikis and/or discussion on Teams, etc. Lecturers will ensure that students are able to access these virtual tools, or will offer them feasible alternatives.
All assessment activities will have the opportunity to be revised, either presentially or virtually. On carrying out each evaluation activity, lecturers will inform students (on Moodle) of the procedures to be followed for reviewing all grades awarded, and the date on which such a review will take place.
To pass the subject through continuous assessment, an average minimum of 5 is required.
The student will be given the grade of “non-assessable” if less than 30% of the assessment activities are submitted.
In the event of a student committing any irregularity that may lead to a significant variation in the grade awarded to an assessment activity, the student will be given a zero for this activity,
regardless of any disciplinary process that may take place. In the event of several irregularities in assessment activities of the same subject, the student will be given a zero as the final grade for this subject.
Reassessment:
For their admission to reassessment, students must have been previously assessed from a set of activities that are equivalent to a minimum of 2/3 parts of the whole qualification. The minimum average grade of the assessed activities cannot be inferior to 3 nor higher than 5.
The 10% assigned to the active participation in the discussion seminars, as well as the assessment activities in which irregularities have been committed, cannot be re-assessed.
Re-assessment will consist in submitting again the assessment activities in which the student failed. The format will be announced with enough anticipation.
The teaching methodology and the evaluation proposed in the guide may undergo some modification subject to the onsite teaching restrictions imposed by health authorities. Any change related to assessment, methodology, etc., will appear at the Virtual Campus in due course.
Title | Weighting | Hours | ECTS | Learning Outcomes |
---|---|---|---|---|
Active participation at the discussion seminars | 10% | 8 | 0.32 | 2, 1, 6, 24, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 5, 4, 14, 15, 16, 20, 22 |
Final Essay | 40% | 40 | 1.6 | 2, 1, 3, 6, 24, 8, 9, 10, 18, 11, 12, 13, 5, 27, 14, 15, 19, 17, 21, 25, 26 |
Written assignment (1) | 25% | 3 | 0.12 | 2, 1, 3, 6, 24, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 5, 27, 23, 14, 15, 19, 21 |
Written assignment (2) | 25% | 3 | 0.12 | 2, 1, 3, 6, 24, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 5, 27, 14, 15, 19, 21 |
Almazán, Adrián (2021). Técnica y tecnología: Cómo conversar con un tecnolófilo. Madrid: Taugenit.
Anders, Günther (2011 [1956]) La obsolescencia del hombre: Sobre el alma en la época de la segunda revolución industrial. Valencia: Pre-Textos.
Benjamin, Ruha (2019). Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bijker, Wiebe; Law, John (eds.), Shaping Technology/Building Society. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Bonneuil, Christophe; Fressoz, Jean-Baptiste (2015). The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History, and Us. London: Verso.
Collins, Harry; Kusch, Martin (1998). The Shape of Actions: What Humans and Machines can Do. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Crawford, Kate (2021). Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.
Dusek, Val (2006). Philosophy of Technology: An Introduction. Malden: Willey-Blackwell.
Edgerton, David (2006). The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900. London: Profile Books.
Friis, Jan Kyrre Berg Olsen et al. (eds.) (2013). A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.
Haraway, Donna (1991). Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 149-182.
Haraway, Donna (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chtulucene. Durham: Duke University Press.
Illich, Ivan (2012 [1973]). La convivencialidad. Barcelona: Virus.
Ippolita (2016). Anime elettriche: riti e miti sociali. Milano: Jaca Books.
Latour, Bruno (1996 [1993]). Aramis, or the Love of Technology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
MacKenzie, Donald; Wajcman, Judy (eds.) (1999). The Social Shaping of Technology (2nd edition). Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Mitcham, Carl (1994). Thinking through Technology: The Path Between Engineering and Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mumford, Lewis (2016 [1967-1970]). El mito de la máquina (2 vols.). Logroño: Pepitas de Calabaza.
Ortega y Gasset, José (2014 [1933]). Ensimismamiento y alteración. Meditación de la técnica y otros ensayos. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
Scharff, Robert; Dusek, Val (eds.) (2014). Philosophy of Technology: The Technological Condition (2nd edition). An Anthology. Malden: Willey-Blackwell.
Schatzberg, Eric (2018) Technology: Critical History of a Concept. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Schüll, Natasha Dow (2012). Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Simondon, Gilbert (2018 [1958]). El modo de existencia de los objetos técnicos. Buenos Aires: Prometeo.
Suchman, Lucy (2006). Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions, 2nd Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tiqqun (2015). La hipótesis cibernética. Madrid: Acuarela & Antonio Machado.
Trocchi, Agnese (2019). Internet, mon amour: Cronache prima del crollo di ieri. C.I.R.C.E. [https://ima.circex.org/]
Verbeek, Peter-Paul (2005). What Things Do. Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Verbeek, Peter-Paul (2011). Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Winner, Langdon (1986). The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High-Technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
None.