Who created and designed this technology?
Stage 2: Question Exercise
Now that you have a specific technology to examine, in this stage, you will answer a series of questions to help you start thinking about how technology functions in the world and what impacts, biases, and technological politics it may have.
Address each of the following questions in about 2-5 sentences. Be sure to refer to specific aspects or elements of your artifact and to your resources to illustrate your answers. Use at least three resources from the UMGC library. If no sources are available on the topic in the library, use other reliable resources such as trade magazines, verifiable historical information, information from the item’s website, etc. Avoid personal blogs; product reviews; promotional, marketing, or advertising materials, etc. If you have any questions about a resource, please contact your instructor.
1. Who created and designed this technology? What are the demographics of the creators? Use at least one reliable resource about inventors, designers, programmers, planners, or the company to answer this question. Also, if appropriate, consider if there is a contested history about who invented the artifact.
2. Provide a very brief history of this technology. How long has it been around? What significant changes has it gone through over the years?
3. According to your observations of this technology in its context, who uses, depends on, or interacts with this technology the most? Who uses, interacts or depends, on it the least? Who never uses, interacts with, depends on, or does not have easy access to it? Why?
4. Based on your observations of this technology in its environment, who seems to benefit from this technology the most? Who might have difficulty benefiting from it and why? What kinds of built-in biases might this technology have due to who benefits from it?
5. Briefly describe one possible change to the design, location, programming or planning of this technology that could change who uses it and/or who can benefit from it.
Format
Number your answers. For each question, write about 2-5 sentences. Make sure you address all the questions. Use MLA style for in-text citations and list your references in MLA style. Your responses should be typed, double-spaced, and use a common 12 pt. font like Times New Roman or Calibri.
