Blog Post Prompts

Week 8 — Technology and capital

150–300 words. Due Monday, Oct. 19.

• Pick one technology and analyze it in light of the Communist Manifesto, sections I and II. Cite at least one passage. Who owns it? Whose labor goes into it? What does it make cheaper, and what does it make obsolete? Does it bear out Marx and Engels’s claim that “the bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production”?

Week 6 — Why repetition?

150–300 words. Due Sunday, Oct. 4.

This week, we’ve connected gambling to social media to AI companions. Reply to one of the prompts (or construct your own):

• Freud, Xiao, and McGowan, in different ways, all make the claim that simple explanations of the way we’re drawn into these systems don’t work. Summarize one of these claims and connect it to your own use of social media or AI. Evaluate their claim in light of this connection.
• McGowan links capitalism to the psychological system as understood by Lacan. But his analysis that, e.g., protesters materially lack and that’s why they protest seems false at worst and hollow and superficial at best to me. Why am I wrong?
• Freud tries to articulate why there must be some drive beyond the pleasure principle that explains certain kinds of repetitive behavior or activity. Whether we need to postulate the death drive for this, what can be said in favor of this general claim?
• After attending the debate on AI companions, say something that links something that came up in the debate with one of our readings (Seymour, Schüll, Freud, McGowan, Xiao, Bukowski…).

Week 5 — Reply to colleagues Due Friday, Oct. 2

Pick one of your colleagues’ Week 5 posts from the syndicated blog posts and respond to it. Get your response in by Friday. It should be at least 100 words. As the responses come in, be sure to moderate them so they actually post to your site.

Week 5 — Flow

150–300 words. Due Sunday, Sept. 27.

• Csikszentmihalyi identified four “preconditions” of flow: first, each moment of the activity must have a little goal; second, the rules for attaining that goal must be clear; third, the activity must give immediate feedback so that one has certainty, from moment to moment, on where one stands; fourth, the tasks of the activity must be matched with operational skills, bestowing a sense of simultaneous control and challenge. In class, we analyzed our use of social media using these preconditions, and several questions arose around both the preconditions and how social media actually works. In particular, we attempted to distinguish between the flow states where we seem to be developing ourselves and those where we are not. Schüll seems to organize this around the notion of future-oriented v. past-oriented. Say something about this notion of flow and our interactions with AI or on social media in light of this discussion.
• You could also write in reaction to Bukowski’s poem, or on another topic entirely.

Week 3 — Your Mini-Project 1 idea

Due Sunday, Sept. 13. We discuss these in class Wednesday, Sept. 16, and Friday, Sept. 18.

• Write up your idea for Mini-Project 1. Name the passage from QCT you want to test, with its page. Name the specific technology: which app, model or device, and how you actually use it. Name the form you’re leaning toward. Then say what you expect to find, or what you’re trying to find out. It doesn’t need to be settled; the point is to have something to work on together in class. If the form you want isn’t on the list, remember to run it by me by Monday, Sept. 14.

Week 2 — Reply to colleagues Due Friday, Sept. 11

Pick one of your colleagues’ Week 2 posts from the syndicated blog posts and respond to it. Get your response in by Friday. It should be at least 100 words. As the responses come in, be sure to moderate them so they actually post to your site.

Week 2 — Heidegger and Standing Reserve

Pick one. 150–300 words. Due Sunday, Sept. 6th.

• First prompt. Citing the relevant passage in “The Question Concerning Technology,” argue whether the line that H. draws between modern technology and handicraft technology holds. For example, he distinguishes an old-style windmill from the hydroelectric turbines in a hydroelectric plant. (There are other examples as well). Is there a distinguishing characteristic? Does it hold? What turns on this distinction?
• Second prompt. Heidegger asserts that the airliner on the runway, e.g, is not an object, (or rather, he admits, that of course it’s an object, but understood that way, “it conceals itself as to what and how it is.” “Revealed, it stands on the taxi strip only as standing-reserve.” Using another thing we usually think of as an object, play out this analysis. What is hidden in thinking of it as an object/what is revealed?
• Third prompt. Take something in your own life that is on call, ordered for use, “standing-reserve,” and describe the ways in which it is so. Then, address whether you too are placed in reserve in relation to this ordering.

Week 1 — Reply to colleagues Due Friday, Sept. 4

Simply pick one of the syndicated blog posts to respond to. Get your response in by Friday. It should be at least 100 words. As the responses come in, be sure to moderate them so they actually post to your site.

Week 1 — Defining technology

Pick one. 150–300 words. Due Sunday, August 30.

• What did you choose in the survey for the topic you want to exclude? Why shouldn't we talk about this topic? If you skipped that question, or answered that you would take any of them, pick the one you are least drawn to and argue against that.
• Articulate with an example what Heidegger means by the instrumental and anthropological understanding of technology — use a technology you actually use. Then speculate about where he is going with this claim that this understanding is correct, but that the “correct is not yet the true.” You are being asked to speculate here. (QCT, pp. 3–6.)
• Run Bradbury’s house through all three of Dusek’s definitions. Is it a technology as hardware? As rule? As system? The house goes on doing everything it was built to do, and there is no one left for it to do anything for. Where the three definitions disagree, say which one you would trust. What turns on whether it is or is not a technology any longer?

You can always write on a topic of your own instead of a prompt.