The Event! Designing Human Futures

Dr. Paul Hartley came to McMaster last night to give us a talk about Reassessing our (i.e. Humans') Relationship with Technology.

The talk was extremely useful in that it provided attendees with an 'archaeology' of technology.
What do I mean by archaeology? Archaeology, in a Foucaudian sense, examines "discursive traces and orders left by the past in order to write a 'history of the present'. In other words archaeology is about looking at history as a way of understanding the processes that have led to what we are today" (Clare O'Farrell for Michel-Foucault.com, 2007).

Dr. Hartley's main premise of the talk was to reassess how we think about our relationship with technology because much of what we think about technology and the future, is steeped in mythology of the past. If we think technology will 'save' us by making life easier, that it necessarily drives (good) change, or that technologies will bring the human race to the pinnacle of progress - these narratives are not new - in fact, he traced their lineage over centuries - and they do not necessarily have to dictate our future relationship.

Dr. Hartley spoke of the importance of using a human-centered (what he called the Human Futures Framework) to re-articulate this relationship in future design and innovation projects.

In so doing, he gave the audience 5 steps to this process (i.e. the framework):
1. Deconstruct - what you know about your project/product/problem
2. Observe - for the purpose of building a better picture of the context
3. Understand - analyzing collected data within the context
4. Speculate - identify possible future pathways (of design, of interest, of intent, etc.)
5. Activate - generate next steps and understand the implication of the investigation.

In all, Dr. Hartley's talk helped frame our understanding how the technology - as we understand today - came to be. It also helped attendees recognize what steps they could take to use a human futures approach (where the human bookends the technology - as a hybrid form that enables humans instead of any other scary apocalyptic scenarios where robots take over for humans) in our everyday design practices.

The Anthropology of Humor - Responding to Everyday Racist Comments and Jokes

In the face of so much bigotry flying around on social media and in our daily lives, it's good practice to remind ourselves of the best practices out there when dealing with everyday racist comments and jokes.

How do anthropologists think about humor as a cultural trait?

According to Anthropologist Robert Lynch, a joke...is like a little brain scan: When we laugh, we reveal what's inside us. In an interview for NPR, Lynch is described as saying: When you and I laugh at the same joke, we signal to each other that we share the same values, the same beliefs. This may be why people all over the world want friends and romantic partners who share their sense of humor. His research on humor can be found here and here.

What are some simple practices we can follow when responding to racist humor?

Emma Thomson and Anne Pederson, Psychologists at Murdoch University, advocate that one simply disagree with a racist statement or to not laugh at a racist joke (acknowledging the importance of personal safety in the face of anger when doing so).

The Southern Poverty Law Centre is a rich resource for those wanting to know how to respond to everyday bigotry. In Speak Up: Responding to Everyday Bigotry, the authors include a diversity of response scenarios, including responses depending on the relationship between the oneself and the individual/structure. From siblings and joking in-laws, to real estate bigotry, unwanted emails as well as one's own personal bias. This is a gold mine.

At the end of this list - they advocate six steps:

1. Be ready
2. Identify the behaviour (call it out - not the person - the behaviour in order to receive a less confrontational response)
3. Appeal to principles (moral humanistic principals)
4. Set limits (for example, that you're unwilling to hear such jokes, etc.)
5. Find an ally/Be an ally (find solace in similarly-minded folks)
6. Be vigilant (making small steps)

Quick Links:

• An Anthropologist Walks Into A Bar And Asks, 'Why Is This Joke Funny?' - Shankar Vedentam, NPR (August 6, 2012)
• It's funny because we think it's true: laughter is augmented by implicit preferences - Robert Lynch (2010)
• Speak Up: Responding to Everyday Bigotry by The Southern Poverty Law Centre (January 25, 2015)
• Self-deception inhibits laughter - Robert Lynch and Robert Trivers (2012)
• What psychology says about how you should respond to racist behaviour - Thomson and Pederson (August 4, 2015)

What can Anthro do? .... Discuss the Future Relationship of Design, Technology and its Human Creators

On September 27th, McMaster University will host Dr. Paul Hartley, a Senior Anthropologist at Idea Couture in Toronto, ON and now, co-founder and Director of the Institute for Human Futures.

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.

Screen Shot from The Institute for Human Futures Homepage Video, 2017

Dr. Hartley's talk entitled Designing Human Futures: Reassessing our Relationship with Technology 
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)