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Course: Social media literacy > Unit 5
Lesson 5: Take action! Imagine humane technologyReflection activity: Imagine humane technology
A better future begins in your mind
Reflection activity: Imagine humane technology
What if we built technology on a very different set of principles, like the ones below?
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🤔 CONSIDER:
- Which tenets are particularly important to you? Why?
- If you were building a new social media platform using these tenets, what would its features be?
- How would it be different from our current social media platforms?
Humane technology is about much more than just writing code. It needs contributions from a wide range of disciplines, for example:
- Psychology: how does technology interact with our minds?
- Sociology: how does technology affect how humans interact with each other?
- Art: how does visual design affect our interactions and emotions?
- History: what can we learn from the past to inform our present decisions?
- Economics: what financial forces affect product decisions, and what economic effects do products have?
Whatever your interests are, you can probably help to advance humane technology in ways you might not have imagined. Technology needs your talents and new ideas to shape its future.
🤔 CONSIDER:
- What does thinking about technology in this way make you want to learn and/or do?
We’ve learned how technology can distract us, divide us, and downgrade our collective ability to solve problems when it’s built to extract our attention for profit.
Imagine a future where these paradigms have shifted. A future where continuing to operate unsustainably is impossible. A future where technology helps us align our actions with our intentions, enabling us to be more free, focused, patient, and secure as we solve tough problems together.
A powerful movement is building to make this future a reality. But it can’t succeed without you. This is your moment to demand change from global leaders and technologists, and to help create the future you want to live in.
Want to join the conversation?
1. The tenets that are important to me are Sensitive to human nature and Helps people thrive because technology should help us be our best selves and it should make sure that it doesn't take advantage of us.
2. If I was building a social media platform using these six tenets the features would include a chatting system to build social connections but only for an hour everyday to ensure no addiction, moderation to ensure that nothing rude is said, A posting system where you are limited to asking 5 questions a day but you can answer 10 questions a day to make sure that you can get your answers on anything such as a class for example, and a algorithm system that gets posts targeted to your values and interests via a little survey you do when signing up.
3. It would be different from other social media platforms by instead of it being something you use for hours you only use it as a tool to answer your questions or to chat with other people it makes you try to stay off it and only use it as a tool.
4. Thinking about technology in this way makes me want to learn how these systems work and everything behind it how does it pull us in?(3 votes)
if i was building a social media platform i would make sure that technology would't take over the people in this world and i now technology is good for human kind people love it nut technology really help us but if i made and owned technology in would only let people get on it for only 5 hours and day because people can be on technology all day(2 votes)
The six tenets are: Sensitive to human nature Helps people thrive Technology should help us live our best lives Make sure it doesn’t exploit us If I were building my social media platform based on these six tenets, my features would be: Chatting system for building social connections, but only for 1 hour a day to avoid addiction Moderation to make sure no rude comments are made Posting system where you can only ask 5 questions per day but answer 10 questions per day to ensure you can get answers on anything like a class Algorithm system that would target posts based on your values/interests via a small survey you complete when signing up Make sure it’s not a tool that you just use for hours to answer questions or chat with people.(1 vote)
1. Avoiding pain,because it has a detrimental effect on all aspects of quality of life.
2. Allow people to experience whatever the other person wants to share.
3. Elements like size, grouping, and color all affect emotional responses. These responses trigger snap judgments.
4.By looking at specific stories of individuals and situations, you can test your own morals and values.
5.Economic forces are factors such as monetary and fiscal policies, interest rate, employment, inflation rate, demographic changes, political changes, energy, security, and natural disasters employment, wages, prices/inflation, interest rates, and consumer confidence.(1 vote)
