HAA 0425 Digital Humanity

“Digital Humanity” approaches the interplay between digital technology and human life from perspectives that span the humanities. While digital technology constitutes both subject and method for courses in computer science, studio arts and elsewhere at Pitt, this course is strongly transdisciplinary; from the perspectives of human(itie)s, it aims to investigate the relationship between digital devices and human beings, frequently tacking back and forth between the machines and the humans, constantly attempting to demonstrate the interactivity between the multiple types of agency represented in these interchanges. The course design resists a teleological narrative about computing in society as a progressive development of sophisticated devices with humans on the sidelines. Instead, the course is thematically organized into units that will cut across computational eras with broader themes: massive data; networks and control; physical bodies and computers; surveillance; entertainment. Thoughts and ideas that arise in one may very well arise again in another—or even be disputed by another. This arrangement serves to remind us all that we are not at the end of computational history, that computational technologies are contingent on humans, that each affects the other, and indeed, are not always distinguishable from the other.

Course readings underscore this theme, and course assignments will require students to use the technologies at their disposal in innovative as well as ad-­-hoc ways. Central to the course is a public discussion forum that enables students to post images, videos, links and text. This thematic history and public nature of course assignments will allow students to unpack and affect the relationship between humans and machines in more complex ways than traditional “computers in society” courses, and in fact, this course will cover material not taught elsewhere at Pitt or in Pittsburgh, or perhaps not even at any other university in the United States.