The Institute for Human Futures is busy trying to reset the way we see our relationship with technology and to help everyone benefit from new approaches to build more ethical, sustainable, and human-centric technologies. Our purpose is to foster creative dialogue between thought leaders in the business world, design labs, and academia, and to develop actionable solutions to the problems inherent in integrating technology into our lives in a more holistic manner.
With words such as human-centric, dialogue, and (particularly) holism, Dr. Hartley's anthropological background is genuinely apparent.
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| Screen Shot from The Institute for Human Futures Homepage Video, 2017 |
will be of interest to those wanting to know more about sustainable, ethical, and effective technological futures.
Full description of talk below:
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the tools we build and explains how we are missing many opportunities for positive transformation by remaining stuck in outdated assumptions about what technology is, what it can do, and what it should do as we design a new future for ourselves.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.
Anthro Everywhere! has written about Dr. Hartley and his work in the past - as a Canadian anthropologist working outside academia - and @anthrolens blogger @JennLong3 is proud to promote this event hosted by the W. Booth School of Engineering Practice & Technology in Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Are you in hearing Dr. Hartley speak? Come out to this free event and register at designinghumanfutures.eventbrite.com
@JennLong3 will write a follow up post about the event in the coming weeks.
Quick Links and Further Reading:
- #AltAc Anthropology Careers - The draw of experiential design firms Anthro Everywhere! (June 5 2017)