Overview
MAIS 624: Critical Approaches to Technology and Society will introduce students to the fundamentals of digital technologies—what they are and how they work—and examine a range of critical tensions that reveal both challenges and potentials for digital cultures. Topics covered include decolonial computing, datafication of identities, the rise of surveillance cultures and role of anticipatory logics, the politics of code, digital materialities, the problems of bias and distortion in data, artificial intelligence (promises and limitations, critical engagements, and creative collaborations), and strategies for challenging digital problematics through feminist data interventions, design justice, models for Indigenous data sovereignty, critical technical practice, and more.
Outline
MAIS 624 is organized into 12 units:
Unit 1—Introduction: A Critical Approach to Computational Cultures
Unit 2—The Datafication of Identity Politics: Subject Formation in a Digital Society
Unit 3—Surveillance & Prediction
Unit 4—Digital Materialities: Getting to Know the Machine
Unit 5—Code Studies Part I: Analyzing the Discourse of Digital Instructions
Unit 6—Code Studies Part II: Exclusions and Repressions
Unit 7—Data and Algorithms: The Problems of Bias and Distortion
Unit 8—Artificial Intelligence Part I: Introduction
Unit 9—Artificial Intelligence Part II: Limitations & Parameters
Unit 10—Artificial Intelligence Part III: Environmental Implications & Regulation
Unit 11—Unsettling the Digital Part I: Feminist Data Sets & Critical Technical Practices
Unit 12—Unsettling the Digital Part II: Critical Engagements
Learning outcomes
After completing this course, students should be able to:
- Explain the foundations of how digital technologies work and debate the significance of digital materialities to social outcomes.
- Apply critical analytic frameworks to the design, implementation, and outcomes of digital technologies including artificial intelligence.
- Discuss implications of digital technologies for identity formation, relations of power, and governance.
- Describe the sociopolitical implications of computer programming including historical exclusions and how coding can shape knowledge and identities.
- Describe interventions into the digital that unsettle dominant digital relations including the significance of feminist data sets, critical technology practices, Indigenous data sovereignty, and queering computing.
- Discuss environmental concerns with AI use and development in terms of energy consumption, carbon emissions, and water use.
- Explain the difference between narrow and general AI, and ways AI can reinforce and extend problematic social outcomes.
- Describe and discuss the merits and limitations of critical creative collaboration with AI.
Evaluation
To receive credit for MAIS 624, students must participate in the online activities, successfully complete all assignments, and achieve a final mark of at least C− (60 percent). Please note that it is students’ responsibility to maintain their program status. Any student who receives a grade of “F” in one course, or a grade of “C” in more than one course, may be required to withdraw from the program.
Students will be evaluated on their understanding of the concepts presented in the course and on their ability to apply those concepts. The final grade in the course will be based on the marks achieved for the following activities.
| Activity | Weight |
| Participation | 20% |
| Assignment 1: Essay—Response to Study Question | 15% |
| Assignment 2: Essay—Digital Materialities | 20% |
| Assignment 3: Essay—Critical Data Literacies | 20% |
| Assignment 4: Co-creation with AI—Experiment & Analysis | 25% |
| Total | 100% |
Materials
Online course materials
All course materials are available online.