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Humanity and Technology

Offering an interdisciplinary conversation about the world we make

We bring leading humanities scholars to LTU’s campus, where they help us interpret, imagine, or understand the past, present, and future of our technologies.

Each event is free, open to the public, and designed to create dialogue between students, faculty, technologists, artists, business leaders and community members. 

 

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Upcoming Lecture

Dimitri Brown, Assistant Professor and Postdoctoral Fellow, Michigan Society of Fellows

Thursday, February 1, 2023

Latest Speaker

The Use and Emotional Processing of Emojis

Dr. Lara Jones, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Wayne State University

October 19, 2023

In a sample of Metro Detroit undergraduate students, 97% reported using emojis at least “sometimes” in their text messaging. But what factors predict who uses emojis, how they use them, and the initial and conscious assessment of the emotional information contained within them, or the feeling produced from them? This first part of this talk describes several factors that predict emoji use – including age, gender, and personality. The initial emotional processing of facial or “smiley” emojis may entail assessing the overall valence (positivity/negativity) and arousal of the emoji itself or of the feeling produced by the emoji. The second part of the talk describes how gender, emoji use, and various affect-related traits (e.g., positive and negative affect, empathy, anxiety, affect intensity) are related to these affective judgments of emojis. Throughout the talk, sources of experimental curiosity driving further emoji research are discussed.

Past Lectures

The Humanity+Technology lecture series offers an interdisciplinary conversation about the world we make and what it means. We bring leading humanities scholars to LTU’s campus, where they help us interpret, imagine, or understand the past, present, and future of our technologies.

From #EpicWins to #TechFails: The Intersectional (in)accessibility of gaming technologies

Dr. Kishonna Gray Associate Professor, Writing, Rhetoric, & Digital Studies, University of Kentucky

March 14, 2023 

This talk provides a cultural interrogation into the (in)accessibility of gaming technologies. By exploring, the Xbox Kinect, Adaptive Controllers, facial recognition, and other surveillance technologies, I explore the potentials of innovative advances in gaming and it’s impact on culture. Gaming hash become the “canary in the coal mine” in providing a roadmap for possibilities and pitfalls in the gaming world but it’s important to explore the technological limits along the lines of marginalized identity.

Twitter

LinkedIn

Attribution and Evasion
Aarthi Vadde, Associate Professor of English, Duke University

October 11, 2022

This talk was about experiments in authorship and editorship that constitute a backlash against a post-Web 2.0 internet mired in privatization, commercialization, and surveillance. It argued, via readings of web institutions (e.g. Creative Commons) and literary texts (e.g. Jonathan Lethem’s “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism” and Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts), that attribution has become the dominant form of compensation for creative online expression under Web 2.0. Precisely because attribution seems ethical and transparent, it is easy to miss its pernicious effects on public discourse. Attribution increases the sway of private property and credit accumulation over how people view expression while greasing the wheels of surveillance projects at the data-tracking level of social media platforms. The second half of the talk turned to the work of avant-garde writer-publisher Stewart Home whose theory and use of multiple-use names (fixed names adopted by multiple people for fluid purposes) deploy evasion as an anarchic critique of the privatized social web.

African American Chemists, Panel

The Humanity+Technology lecture series offers an interdisciplinary conversation about the world we make and what it means. We bring leading humanities scholars to LTU’s campus, where they help us interpret, imagine, or understand the past, present, and future of our technologies.

African American Chemists Panel
Dr. Sibrina Collins, Professor LaVetta Appleby, Dr. Darryl Boyd

September 14, 2021

AI and Creativity, Avery Slater

The Humanity+Technology lecture series offers an interdisciplinary conversation about the world we make and what it means. We bring leading humanities scholars to LTU’s campus, where they help us interpret, imagine, or understand the past, present, and future of our technologies.

AI and Creativity
Avery Slater, Assistant Professor of English, University of Toronto, Faculty Affiliate, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

October 12, 2021

Race, Technology, and the City Symposium

The Humanity + Technology lecture series offers a public conversation about the world we make and waht it means, and is made possible through the financial support of the Michigan Humanities Council . Learn more at our website 

From Prototyping to World Building

Dr. Jentery Sayers, Associate Professor of English and Cultural, Social, and Political Thought, University of Victoria
A Humanity + Technology / COAD Lecture
Lawrence Technological University
March 25, 2021, 6-7:30 p.m.

Participate in this free, interactive event either via Zoom:
http://bit.ly/3dbeLNM

or YouTube Livestream:
https://youtu.be/nNN4B-eaTrc

Abstract: How and to what effects is prototyping a mode of inquiry in humanities research and teaching? In this talk, I survey examples across labs and classrooms and then attend to one project in particular: “Remaking the Reading Optophone” at the University of Victoria (UVic). Dating back to the 1910s, reading optophones converted type into audible tones to give blind readers direct access to ink print materials. Now considered to be “obsolete,” they were foundational to the development of optical character recognition (OCR). With researcher Tiffany Chan, I prototyped past iterations of the reading optophone at UVic to study the labor of translation, which is frequently ignored by historians of media and technology. I conclude this talk by outlining what we learned from “prototyping the past” and how it directed our attention to the practice of world building.

Speaker Bio: Jentery Sayers (he / him / his) is Associate Professor of English and Cultural, Social, and Political Thought at the University of Victoria on the unceded territory of the Lekwungen peoples and the Songhees, Esquimalt, and W̱SÁNEĆ First Nations. He directs the Praxis Studio for Comparative Media Studies and is the editor of Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (University of Minnesota Press), The Routledge Companion to Media Studies and Digital Humanities (Routledge), and Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities (Modern Language Association, with co-editors, Davis, Gold, and Harris).

 
Technology Versus the Humanities

Dr. Eric Schatzberg
Professor and Chair, School of History and Sociology
Georgia Institute of Technology

February 16th, 2021 12:30-1:45pm


Using Computing’s Past to Understand Current Tech Crises

Dr. Mar Hicks, Associate Professor of History and Technology, Illinois Institute and Technology
December 1, 2020, 6 pm

View the livestream at: https://youtu.be/57LWrnFgLfI

The Humanity+Technology lecture series offers a public conversation about the world we make and what it means, and is made possible through the financial support of the Michigan Humanities Council. Learn more at our website.

 
Finding Nature in the Games We Play

Dr. Alenda Chang, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
November 5, 2020, 12:30-1:45 pm

View the livestream at: https://youtu.be/57LWrnFgLfI

Abstract:  What if starting up a game could offer us as meaningful a natural experience as going outdoors? Games, especially digital ones, are frequently dismissed as frivolous, arcane, or violent, and people tend to picture those who play them as antisocial boys sitting hunched indoors. But research shows that games are played by nearly everyone, often together with others, and increasingly, that they are played wherever we go. This talk contends that games today offer unique and playfully persuasive opportunities not only to engage directly with environmental issues, but also to foster moments of empathy, loss, care, experimentation, and optimism—ways of seeing and dealing with our troubled world anew.

Speaker Bio:  Alenda Chang is an Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her first book, Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games , develops environmentally informed frameworks for understanding and designing digital games (University of Minnesota Press, December 2019). Chang is the founding co-editor of a new UC Press open-access journal, Media+Environment , and at UC Santa Barbara she co-directs Wireframe , a media studio that promotes collaborative theoretical and creative media practice with investments in global social and environmental justice.

The Humanity+Technology lecture series offers a public conversation about the world we make and what it means, and is made possible through the financial support of the Michigan Humanities Council .

Human-Centered Environmental Controls

Human-Centered Environmental Controls:
Bio-Sensing Environmental Control for Ensuring Human Thermal Comfort in the Building Environment

Dr. Joon-Ho Choi, Associate Dean of Research and Creative Work, University of Southern California

September 17, 2020

Abstract: Dr. Choi’s research focuses on developing an integrated human-centered framework for intelligent environmental control in a building. The physiological signals of the occupants, as well as their ambient environmental data, are integrated by using wearable sensing agents and embedded environmental sensors. This novel concept embodies an integrative approach that promotes viable bio-sensing-driven multi-criteria decisions for determining building thermal and lighting system controls. This interdisciplinary research across Engineering, Medicine, and Architecture has a large potential to enhance energy efficiency and occupants’ wellbeing by optimizing building environmental control performance.

Speaker Bio: Dr. Joon-Ho Choi is the Associate Dean for Research & Creative Work and an Associate Professor of Building Science in the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California. Prior to taking the position, he worked as an assistant professor in the Dept. of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology. Dr. Choi’s interdisciplinary research interests include advanced controls for high performance buildings, bio-sensing controls in the built environment, smart building enclosure, passive building strategies, human-centered building environmental control, building systems integration, environmental sustainability, and comprehensive POE (post-occupancy evaluation), indoor environmental quality, and human health, and work productivity.

 

Pentecostal Technologies: From Village Cybernetics to Social Media

“Pentecostal Technologies: From Village Cybernetics to Social Media”
Dr. Ginger Nolan, Assistant Professor of

Architectural History and Urbanism,
University of Southern California
A collaborative CoAD and Humanity + Technology lecture
Lawrence Technological University
November 7 | 6 pm | T429

Abstract:  In the 1950s-70s European and U.S. designers and engineers developed new forms of media infrastructure in the global south as a way of countering popular resistance to colonial- and state-sponsored rural reforms. Combining propagandistic media with architectures of forced resettlement, designers proposed to circumvent political resistance by instating subtle techniques of persuasion in lieu of more direct forms of state intervention. These “pentecostal technologies,” which aimed to displace language-based discourse, subsequently proved influential to the development of graphic user interfaces for personal computing. Nolan uses this history to consider the impoverishment and aestheticization of political discourse under present regimes of social media.

Bio:  Ginger Nolan is an assistant professor of architectural theory at the University of Southern California. Her scholarship examines intersections between nootechnologies, design aesthetics, and constructions of race.
Nolan is the author of The Neo-colonialism of the Global Village (University of Minnesota Press, 2018), which examines the influence of colonial technopolitics on Marshall McLuhan’s conception of “the global village”. She has a second book forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press provisionally titled “Savage Mind / Savage Machine: Design, Technology and the Making of Magical Thought”. Her articles and essays have appeared in Grey Room, Architectural Theory Review, The Journal of Architecture, Perspecta, Log, Volume, Thresholds, Avery Review, and e-flux .

Octavia Butler’s Kindred: Past, Present, and Future

Octavia Butler’s  Kindred:  Past, Present, and Future
A Panel Discussion Featuring Dr. Lisa Ze Winters (Wayne State University), Yolanda Jack (Charles H. Wright Museum), Kim Hunter (Kresge Arts Award Winner)
Humanity + Technology Lecture Series
Lawrence Technological University
October 15, 12:30-1:45, Room S100

Abstract:  Octavia Butler’s Kindred is a ground-breaking work of speculative fiction that tells the story of a woman mysteriously transported from the twentieth century to an antebellum slave plantation. The story offers a complex depiction of the legacy of slavery and its impact on race, gender, and identity in American culture. The novel celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, and was recently adapted into a graphic novel. In this panel discussion, literary scholars, historians, and creative writers will discuss the legacy of Butler’s vision and the ongoing significance of this work.

Against (Internet) Freedom

Against (Internet) Freedom
Prof. Tung-Hui Hu, University of Michigan
Humanity + Technology Lecture Series
Lawrence Technological University
September 12 | 12:30-1:45 pm | Room S100

Abstract:  Internet freedom is one of the most deeply ingrained ideas in digital culture; it is hard to find someone who doesn’t believe in it. But what do we really mean by that idea? And who are the pirates, spammers, and fraudsters that seem to threaten Internet freedom—that together represent today’s “enemy of all”? This talk looks at what can go wrong when we believe too deeply in the myth of Internet freedom: when wealthy eccentrics build ‘seastead’ settlements on the ocean waves to seek it out; when enthusiasts defending Internet freedom turn into digital vigilantes; and a world where CAPTCHA tests decide, with a decidedly racial tinge, who is human and who is not. Revisiting the story of digital culture through its sometimes-seedy underbelly, this talk looks at who is swept up by this lofty myth—and who is left out.

Speaker Bio:  Tung-Hui Hu is the author of A Prehistory of the Cloud (MIT Press, 2015), which The New Yorker described as “mesmerizing… absorbing [in] its playful speculations,” as well as three books of poetry, most recently Greenhouses, Lighthouses (2013). A recent NEA and Berlin Prize fellow, Hu is an associate professor of English at the University of Michigan.

The Ethics of Autonomous Driving

Panel Discussion
The Ethics of Autonomous Driving
Southfield Public Library
April 18 | 6 pm

A panel discussion featuring representatives from industry, philosophy, and government.

Dr. Miucic is a Technical Fellow and a Team Lead at Changan US R&D Center, Inc. His current research is in wireless communication, sensors for autonomous driving, and development of cooperative safety applications.

Dr. Kuipers is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan. Among his research in artificial intelligence and robotics, he is currently investigating ethics as a foundational domain of knowledge for robots and other AIs.

Dr. Shargel is a Professor at Lawrence Tech and teaches philosophy. He is a technology enthusiast and focuses his research on emotions and moral psychology.

Giuseppe Santangelo is the founder and CEO of Skypersonic, Inc. He collaborates with Wayne State University and Lawrence Tech as adjunct professor of the Autonomous Vehicles and Aerospace Propulsion courses. He studied Astronautical Engineering at the University “La Sapienza di Roma.”

Asimov, the Ice Moons of Saturn, and New Humanities

Professor Kenneth Knoespel
McEver Professor of Engineering and the Liberal Arts, Emeritus
Georgia Institute of Technology
March 21 | 12:30 pm
Lawrence Tech University, Room S100

What do we really mean when we speak of a ‘new humanities?’ Have the ‘old’ humanities passed into ambiguity? Has engineering become a new liberal art? How may we shape a ‘new humanities’ that is not the ‘old humanities’ in digital disguise? Such questions challenge the practice of a ‘new humanities’ and yet are essential as we confront problems on our planet Earth and beyond. In this lecture, Professor Knoespel considers current research and teaching that involves the integration of disciplines. In particular, he will draw on his collaborations with scientists and engineers in astrobiology to show how a current plan to explore Enceledus, an ice moon of Saturn, richly engages a spectrum of disciplines.

 
Care-ful Futures Design, Technology, and the More than Human

Laura Forlano
Associate Professor of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology
February 19 | 6 pm
Lawrence Tech University, Room T429

How do you study people, things, and futures that do not yet exist? Based on 10 years of scholarship and practice on emerging technologies, this talk will draw on theories around the posthuman and the more-than-human in order to understand the emergent aesthetics, ethics, and politics. This presentation takes on media and technology across a range of scales including smart cities and autonomous vehicles, robots, and the future of work, networked medical devices and computational fashion. This talk will draw on examples from design research that demonstrate a critical, participatory and speculative engagement with these futures. 

 
Social Media, Relationships, and Technology

Social Media, Relationships, and Technology
Dr. Stephanie T. Tong, Ph.D.
Department of Communication, Wayne State University
January 24 | 12:30 pm | Room S100

With the online and mobile dating industry valued at approximately $2 billion, technologically-assisted dating is now a thriving business. While the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to the very “human” endeavor of romance might seem like an odd coupling, people are trusting AI to guide them on their search for a soulmate, now more than ever.

In this presentation, Dr. Tong will share a series of experiments she conducted with her team at the Social Media and Relational Technologies (SMART) Labs at Wayne State University. These studies indicate that online daters have come to appreciate the use of AI for developing dating relationships, even if they don’t always recognize its influence. The startling conclusion from this research is that a better understanding of AI technologies doesn’t necessarily require more data-driven coding, but a deeper investigation into human perception, affect, and emotion.

For more information on SMART Labs: https://www.smartlabswayne.com/

 

Integrating Neuroscience and Cloud Technology to Reduce Institutional Barriers to Education

Dr. Franco Pestilli
Assistant Professor, Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University
December 13 | 12:30

Cloud platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Google are becoming a widespread phenomenon impacting the lives of billions of people. But are they improving society? Specifically, can cloud platforms improve science and education? Dr. Pestilli will present brainlife.io, a new platform created to advance the understanding of the human brain while teaching new ways of scientific practice to the next generation of researchers.

Learning from Sci-Fi and Prototyping Alternative Futures

Sophia Brueckner
Assistant Professor, Stamps School of Art and Design, University of Michigan
November 15 | 6:30-8:00 pm
LTU’s Detroit Center for Design and Technology

As a designer, Sophia Brueckner is interested in the application of embodied cognition to interaction design, wearable technology, digital fabrication, generative systems, sound, and, as a technology antidote, painting. In this presentation, she will share examples of her work in Sci-Fi Prototyping, which combines science fiction, functional prototypes, and the ethics of invention/design. By materializing speculative fictions, Brueckner seeks to understand and call attention to technology’s controlling effects, while encouraging the ethical and thoughtful design of new technologies.

Victor Frankenstein Today

Victor Frankenstein Today, Shelley’s Novel and Contemporary Bioengineering Panelists:
Dr. Michael Scrivener, Distinguished Professor of English, Wayne State University
Dr. Eric Meyer, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, LTU
Dr. Dan Shargel, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, LTU
October 18 | 12:30
A200

Two hundred years ago, Mary Shelley published Frankenstein. The novel’s author was only 20 years old at the time, but her story of a scientist creating a living, speaking being has become a cultural icon. Why does this novel continue to speak to us? In particular, what might it say about our current moment, when advances in bioengineering and artificial intelligence present us with new opportunities and ethical dilemmas? What would the novel look like is Victor Frankenstein were alive today?

Our panel of experts, representing bioengineering, philosophy, and literary studies, will help us address these questions.

Are Computer Technologies Just Tools?

Dr. N. Katherine Hayles
James B. Duke Professor Emerita of Literature, Duke University
October 11 | 12:30 pm
A200

Asking if computers are just tools invites us to consider whether our interactions with them are transforming what it means to be human. This talk will explore scientific research and fictional narratives that suggest programmable and networked media are neurologically, socially, culturally, and economically transforming how humans function. A case will be made that humans and computational media have now become symbionts, each facilitating the life cycle of the other. Crafting a framework in which meaning making is not longer an exclusively human prerogative, the talk will conclude by exploring the implications of this perspective.

» Document Viewer

Use Your Cell Phone as a Document Camera in Zoom

  • What you will need to have and do
  • Download the mobile Zoom app (either App Store or Google Play)
  • Have your phone plugged in
  • Set up video stand phone holder

From Computer

Log in and start your Zoom session with participants

From Phone

  • Start the Zoom session on your phone app (suggest setting your phone to “Do not disturb” since your phone screen will be seen in Zoom)
  • Type in the Meeting ID and Join
  • Do not use phone audio option to avoid feedback
  • Select “share content” and “screen” to share your cell phone’s screen in your Zoom session
  • Select “start broadcast” from Zoom app. The home screen of your cell phone is now being shared with your participants.

To use your cell phone as a makeshift document camera

  • Open (swipe to switch apps) and select the camera app on your phone
  • Start in photo mode and aim the camera at whatever materials you would like to share
  • This is where you will have to position what you want to share to get the best view – but you will see ‘how you are doing’ in the main Zoom session.