This is a course that looks at infrastructure from a socio-technical systems perspective. Throughout the STS program at UMD we try to make visible the mundane but necessary aspects of social and physical infrastructure. In this course it is our primary focus. We have begun to experiment with breaking down the mind/body dichotomy and exploring how privileging sight can render aspects of infrastructure invsible. So we have students build infrastructure assessment tools with all of our senses (smell, hearing, listening, touching, feeling, and seeing).
Source
David Tomblin and Nicole Mogul (College Park Scholars Science, Technology and Society program)
David Tomblin and Nicole Mogul, "Infrastructure and Society Syllabus (UMD - STS)", contributed by David Tomblin, STS Infrastructures, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 24 June 2021, accessed 26 April 2024. https://stsinfrastructures.org/content/infrastructure-and-society-syllabus-umd-sts
Critical Commentary
This is a course that looks at infrastructure from a socio-technical systems perspective. Throughout the STS program at UMD we try to make visible the mundane but necessary aspects of social and physical infrastructure. In this course it is our primary focus. We have begun to experiment with breaking down the mind/body dichotomy and exploring how privileging sight can render aspects of infrastructure invsible. So we have students build infrastructure assessment tools with all of our senses (smell, hearing, listening, touching, feeling, and seeing).