What does it mean to be human in a digital era? How can an online performance or a meme be as powerful as a protest in the street? What happens when artificial intelligence (AI) does not just assist us, but starts to mirror us—flawed, biased, and political? Who owns our digital bodies, identities, and creations? What kind of world are we building when digital spaces become our primary homes for work, play, and love?
This course explores how humans live with emerging technologies and make sense of the digital world. We will examine how people's behaviors in digital space translate into analogue space and vice versa. From robot priests to AI singularity, we will situate emerging technologies within a broad cultural and social context and learn to recognize existing complexities and contradictions.
Each session will focus on a specific topic related to emerging technologies, including AI, virtual reality, online communities and social media, conspiracy theories, gender and identity, performing and visual arts, religions, gamification, transhumanism, and ethics. This course is designed to inspire students to think critically and creatively about emerging technologies and our relationships with them.