Critical Tech Talk 11: Speculative Imaginaries and Technological Design

[Arts Communications]

Join the Critical Tech Talk series this Friday, January 24 from 3:00-4:30pm to hear guest speaker Sherryl Vint, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, on how speculative fiction can help us cultivate a more inclusive social imagination. This event features respondent Liahm Ruest, MSc candidate in Biology at the University of Waterloo, and moderator Dr. Marcel O'Gorman.

About the talk
Speculative fiction (sf) is an influential mode that shapes how we imagine what technologies and futures we find desirable, feasible, and valuable. But whose values inform imagined techno-utopian futures? How can we draw on the power of sf if we understand the genre not as a storehouse of technologies we might one day create, but instead as a critical engagement with the way that technology inevitably shapes the social world in ways that extend far beyond its intended use? Using the example of the intersection of sf with disability studies, this talk will outline how sf can function as a mode of enquiry, a rhetorical tool that can help us guide technological development toward greater inclusion and equity by opening new perspectives on the problems technology seeks to solve. Focusing on the specific example of sf written from the perspective of people with disability, it will show how such fictions can help us understand how to cultivate a more capacious social imagination as a crucial element of equitable and inclusive technological design.
Learn more and register to join on Zoom<https://uwaterloo.ca/arts/events/critical-tech-talk-11-speculative-imaginaries-and>.

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For help promoting your event, please contact the Arts Communication Team<https://uwaterloo.ca/arts/contacts?title=&group%5B188%5D=188>.
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