Hide menu

Computing in times of extinction

2023HT

Status Active - open for registrations
School IDA-gemensam (IDA)
Division LiU
Owner Ola Leifler

  Log in  




Course plan

No lectures

We will read, think, talk, and reach out.

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

Preferrably "Why computing is insolvent", or at least a thorough 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

Facing Extinction by Ingram, 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.

Lectures

Provided by course participants mostly, with course staff as co-learners

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