Democratising Technology
Lead Research Organisation:
Queen Mary University of London
Department Name: English
Abstract
Digital technology is starting to connect together new aspects of life, from automated monitoring in care homes to voting by text message. 'Newtorks of things' that add intangible layers of information to our environments are being developed. In a democracy, the use of these technologies could be the responsibility of everyone to decide: they have huge implications for the shape of society - the amount of personal data that changes hands, for instance. But the social potential remains hard for people to envisage - even within the computer labs where developments are going on.
This project recognises the challenge mounted for people with little technical knowledge - but who will have to live with the design consequences - and seeks to equip them with the envisioning skills that underpin participation in design decisions about how technology will be used.
Performance is unique in its sustained development of methods that engage people in envisioning and altering their own possible futures: the creation of desirable social solutions and the functions that suppor them. These methods have been shown to transform attitudes and prepare people to deal with change. For instance, Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed has even changed legislation in Brasil, where it is practiced widely. We will explore several methods derived from performance and based in learning-by-doing as a way of turning people speedily from spectators in the development of tools of the future to actors and designers, to actively creating desirable social solutions and the functions that support them. By tackling knowledge, confidence and imagination in a series of exercies that are based on how new technologies are anyway absorbed into use, it will be possible to test what is effective in motivating people to become directive about the characteristics they want - and do not want - in future technology.
Using workshops with community groups and performance and an exhibition derived from the learning gained in these workshops, we will extract the key techniques for engaging people in complex design choices and make resources that designers can use to stimulate further collaboration, including reusable snippets of the performance and exhibition.
Experts in devising transformative events from drama, public art, computer science, design and human-computer interaction will work with students and interested artists and design professionals to create this series of techniques, which will then be demonstrated widely in the design community and beyond.
The effectiveness of the techniques will be assessed by issuing questionnaires to people involved in workshops, the performances (which are followed by discussion) and in the exhibition - to be staged in an accessible public gallery in London to bring a wider group of people. As well as these written questions before and after, there will be interviews with many of them and places for people to note their thoughts. To make this an enticing prospect, the project team will create a 'diary room' that travels to events, lessens the dry feeling of answering questions and encourages contributions.
In this way, cross fertilisation between scientific concepts and artistic methods will produce a professional community of interested people, drawn internationally to tackle one of the biggest transitions facing the world - from pre-network to network - in a way that allows the maximum number of people to contribute and thereby reduces the dangers of implementing expensive systems that either fail or impose, indrude and offend.
This project recognises the challenge mounted for people with little technical knowledge - but who will have to live with the design consequences - and seeks to equip them with the envisioning skills that underpin participation in design decisions about how technology will be used.
Performance is unique in its sustained development of methods that engage people in envisioning and altering their own possible futures: the creation of desirable social solutions and the functions that suppor them. These methods have been shown to transform attitudes and prepare people to deal with change. For instance, Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed has even changed legislation in Brasil, where it is practiced widely. We will explore several methods derived from performance and based in learning-by-doing as a way of turning people speedily from spectators in the development of tools of the future to actors and designers, to actively creating desirable social solutions and the functions that support them. By tackling knowledge, confidence and imagination in a series of exercies that are based on how new technologies are anyway absorbed into use, it will be possible to test what is effective in motivating people to become directive about the characteristics they want - and do not want - in future technology.
Using workshops with community groups and performance and an exhibition derived from the learning gained in these workshops, we will extract the key techniques for engaging people in complex design choices and make resources that designers can use to stimulate further collaboration, including reusable snippets of the performance and exhibition.
Experts in devising transformative events from drama, public art, computer science, design and human-computer interaction will work with students and interested artists and design professionals to create this series of techniques, which will then be demonstrated widely in the design community and beyond.
The effectiveness of the techniques will be assessed by issuing questionnaires to people involved in workshops, the performances (which are followed by discussion) and in the exhibition - to be staged in an accessible public gallery in London to bring a wider group of people. As well as these written questions before and after, there will be interviews with many of them and places for people to note their thoughts. To make this an enticing prospect, the project team will create a 'diary room' that travels to events, lessens the dry feeling of answering questions and encourages contributions.
In this way, cross fertilisation between scientific concepts and artistic methods will produce a professional community of interested people, drawn internationally to tackle one of the biggest transitions facing the world - from pre-network to network - in a way that allows the maximum number of people to contribute and thereby reduces the dangers of implementing expensive systems that either fail or impose, indrude and offend.
