Designing Human Futures: Reassessing our relationship with technology

W. Booth School of Engineering Practice & Technology welcomes Dr. Paul Hartley, Executive Director, Institute for Human Futures, Sr. Resident Anthropologist to speak about designing human futures and to reassess our relationship with technology.

LOCATION: McMaster University Student Centre; CIBC Hall, 3rd floor
WHEN: 6 – 7 p.m.; doors open at 5:30 p.m.
RSVP required: designinghumanfutures.eventbrite.com

Description
We live in a technological world that is not entirely our own. Much of what we understand about our technologies and ourselves was crafted in the past, and our approaches were developed in response to the problems of the time. Many are no longer relevant, but we still apply them as we develop increasingly sophisticated tools. To build a more sustainable, ethical, and effective technological future for ourselves we have to shed many of these older ways to thinking and reassess our relationship with technology. This talk offers an alternative perspective on our relationship with the tools we build and explains how we are missing many opportunities for positive transformation by remaining stuck in outdated assumptions about what technology is, what it can do, and what it should do as we design a new future for ourselves. Together, we will reconsider our technological past, reassess our present, and look to futures that are currently closed to us because we still take a technology-first perspective in designing the tools of the future. Along the way, Dr. Hartley will introduce the human futures perspective and offer a vision of how it can be incorporated into design, development, and implementation of new technologies, products, and services.