Swedish web site
Computing in times of extinction2024HT
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Course plan
No lectures
We will read, think, talk, find new ways to act and reach out to others in the process.
Recommended for anyone with a sense of discomfort
The course is a given if we find it meaningful
Goals
To be able to rationally reason about potential societal collapse scenarios
given our current global predicaments.
To find courage to accept what is currently happening in the world and
recalibrate which type of computing seems to make sense in light of real,
existential risks for societal collapse.
Prerequisites
An understanding of at least the symptoms of our current multipolar global crises.
Organization
The course will begin by formulating personal plans and challenges around how to accept and cope with prospects for a very tumultuous future, and will be based on seminars designed to help participants express their emotions and embrace dark, challenging topics around how computing is complicit in our unfolding crises. Seminar outline will be produced in collaboration with course participants. Each participant will develop a plan on how to respond professionally in light of collapse awareness, and will get help to do so from other course participants. The plan will be an instrument for self-assessment during the course.
Content
Collapsology, existential risks, generator functions of societal collapse, multipolar crises, tipping points, ecological trauma, deep adaptation, permacomputing
Literature
"Insolvent: How to Reorient Computing for Just Sustainability" by Becker, Deep Adaptation by Bendell, and other research papers related to the contents, texts and material of the course. We will cover collapse-aware computing such as permacomputing and Post-Collapse Computing.
Seminars
Co-hosted by course participants on topics of the insolvency of computing and potential responses, generator functions of our metacrises and mechanisms for coping and building agency among participants
Examination
Guided self-assessment related to each individual's ability to engage with and make sense of implications of potentials for collapse.
Examiner
Ola Leifler
Credits
6
Comments
This is likely to be an emotionally challenging course, but the course will explicitly provide support to those who wish to engage with this topic.
Page responsible: Director of Graduate Studies
