WALL-E is a film set in the future where robots are tasked to take care of the remaining humans left from Earth up on a ship in space and humans killed the Earth due to their polluting the environment.
I have loved this movie since it came out when I was a child. Primarily because of the cute robots but also because of the message it spreads. It is important that we take care of our home, and I think this film really shows how important Earth is to us and how, no matter what, we will always go back to our Mother Earth.
Reactions
This was a very impactful movie that showed the possible future of humans if we keep living the wasteful and selfish life we are living now. If we keep taking advantage of the home we have, we will no longer be free, and we will no longer have a home. This film does show a life that seems full of luxury, but it is purely based on entertainment and that is all. What kind of life would that be worth living if we couldn’t run free and breathe in fresh air and fall in love? The lives these people are living are being controlled by robots, so they stay happy and immobilized so that when the time comes, they can not stop the AI from eventually taking over.
When I first watched this movie, I didn’t understand the whole meaning of it because I was so young. But now that I am older, I can appreciate the message it is giving more, and I can integrate it into my everyday life. I often find myself thinking about waste and how I can better help the planet and be less wasteful, and I think a big part of that came from how I was raised but also because of this movie and how much I have loved it throughout my life as a child and as a young adult.
Reflections
This film really shows how AI can evolve over time and how they may become conscious and aware. WALL-E is a robot that was made to clean up the Earth so humans could eventually come back from space, but WALL-E becomes self-aware and is seen longing to be/see humans and collects things from when they were around, he even pretends to be a human and dances along with an old film he found and finds himself also longing for love as he is in complete solitude because all of the other clean up robots have died, he ends up befriending a cockroach and WALL-E shows physical emotion towards his little friend and even feeds him to keep him alive.
This film shows a possible future where humans can no longer live on Earth and depend on robots to keep them alive and thriving. We need to take better care of the Earth we were given so we do not kill everything good that we have and have to leave due to our selfish actions.
For an AI-related movie, I watched the anime version of Ghost in the Shell, a late 20th century vision of five years from now. I hadn’t watched or read it before, so it was about time. I noticed echoes of Bladerunner, RoboCop and The Matrix. The film was based on a manga which seems to unwittingly comment on our current situation.
Beyond the thematic references, I was interested in the philosophical musings on evolution, life and humanity. The hero of the story is a cyborg, essentially a robot with a human brain. Is she then human? She’s not so sure:
Major Motoko Kusanagi: Well, I guess cyborgs like myself have a tendency to be paranoid about our origins. Sometimes I suspect I am not who I think I am, like maybe I died a long time ago and somebody took my brain and stuck it in this body. Maybe there never was a real me in the first place, and I’m completely synthetic like that thing.
Batou: You’ve got human brain cells in that titanium shell of yours. You’re treated like other humans, so stop with the angst.
Major Motoko Kusanagi: But that’s just it, that’s the only thing that makes me feel human. The way I’m treated. I mean, who knows what’s inside our heads? Have you ever seen your own brain?
Batou: It sounds to me like you’re doubting your own ghost.
Major Motoko Kusanagi: What if a cyber brain could possibly generate its own ghost, create a soul all by itself? And if it did, just what would be the importance of being human then?
And that refers to the AI in the film, the Puppet Master
Puppet Master: It can also be argued that DNA is nothing more than a program designed to preserve itself. Life has become more complex in the overwhelming sea of information. And life, when organized into species, relies upon genes to be its memory system. So man is an individual only because of his intangible memory. But memory cannot be defined, yet it defines mankind. The advent of computers and the subsequent accumulation of incalculable data has given rise to a new system of memory and thought, parallel to your own. Humanity has underestimated the consequences of computerization.
Could we draw a parallel between GPT and DNA? I’m out of my element here of course, but I see in both an encoding of the existing and the production of something new. The issue of memory is significant too. We used to preserve memories with film photography. This had imperfections, but was based on physical reality. The photos I take with my phone are mediated through algorithms, and have been known reinterpret reality.
So I asked our teach-mech Dr. Oblivion, “How does the vision of artificial intelligence presented in Ghost in the Shell hold up in the present day?”
includes sample of Ghosthack from Ghost In The Shell (1995) OST
I think if I asked a better question, I might have gotten a better response. AI apps aren’t known for insight, and sometimes give us the most obvious string of words. Will our AI future be dystopian, or just disappointing?
The doctor does touch on an important point. We built the internet in order to augment human intelligence. Around the time of Ghost in the Shell, we opened it up to commercial exploitation, and a few people became unimaginably wealthy. For the past couple decades, more and more it’s been developed as a tool for social control. So who is the web for? Who is AI for? In ds106 we all have our own little pieces of the web, as it was meant to be. Entities like Alphabet and Amazon and Meta and Microsoft come along like Columbus and plant a flag in it and claim it for their own. Do we go along with that, or do we want open, public infrastructure? The easy path may not be the most rewarding.
Welcome to ds106! This first week is dedicated to getting set up: set up your domain and Web hosting; install your WordPress site; and create other social media accounts such as Mastodon, and Discord. The sooner you get started, the better. If you run into trouble after looking through the supporting links, the Digital Knowledge Center is a great place to go for help.
This course will run on the open web. Some people may not be comfortable putting themselves online. You are welcome to create personae and pseudonyms, and you are not required to put any personal information online. You may find it useful to use your web presence as an online portfolio though.
We will be using a general theme of artificial intelligence this semester. The purpose of working with a theme is to give us some common ground for collaboration and interaction. Where we go with this theme will be determined largely by you. We see the topic and tools as offering many options for creative investigation, interaction and expression. As part of our storytelling adventure you will be creating characters which you can use to engage with the course, and to build stories around. More on this next week.
Here is a detailed list of what to do this week:
1. Review the Syllabus
You should carefully read through the syllabus. This course is different from most. The syllabus will help you understand the work and activities of the course. If you have any questions on the content, send them to me via email.
2. Schedule a meeting We want to meet online with everyone in the class during the first two weeks. Sign up for a noon time slot on this form. If none of the times work for you any day, give us some alternate times and we’ll work something out.
3. Password management One skill that will prove critical to keeping up with the various services and accounts you setup over the semester (and life online in general) is a password management tool. There are many, 1Password and LastPass are two of the more popular, but they cost money. So if you are new to password management and don’t want to go out of pocket before you explore the approach, Bitwarden is an excellent, open solution for managing passwords and other keys safely. Managing your logins and passwords effectively will change your online life! This Youtuber will take you through the setup in detail, and trust us, it is worth the time invested
4. Set Up Your Accounts
This course runs on the open web and in various social media venues. I am assuming everyone knows how to be safe online. How you choose to present yourself, or what you choose to present as yourself, is entirely up to you. You will be creating a persona for the course in coming weeks, so you may want to start with a pseudonym here.
a. Domain Sign up for your own domain name and web site (free through UMW’s Domain of One’s Own project). Detailed instructions can be found here. Don’t skip the domain verification step! If you already have a domain through Domain of One’s Own, then you are one step ahead.
b. Mastodon https://social.ds106.us/home Mastodon will be one of our channels for communication in ds106. Send your first message of greeting and be sure to use #ds106 hashtag in your tweets. Follow the #ds106 hashtag.
c. Discord Join the class Discord server. You should have received an invitation email.
5. Install WordPress
You’ll be using this installation of WordPress to share your work every week, all semester. So you’ll want to get this installed and get comfortable with it ASAP. You should install it either at the root of your domain (www.yourdomain.com) or on a subdomain (ds106.yourdomain.com, for example). If you already have WordPress installed on your UMW Domain from another course, you can use your existing site (and just tag or categorize your ds106 work accordingly) or choose to create a new WordPress site in a separate subdomain.
We have three online guides that I recommend you review as you tackle this task:
Brief Introduction to cPanel: This guide will help you learn to navigate cPanel (the control panel for Web hosting on Domain of One’s Own).
Creating Subdomains and Subdirectories (optional): If you want to install WordPress somewhere other than at the root of your domain, check out this guide.
NOTE: Do not use wordpress.com or wix or weebly or tumblr or whatever other third-party services are out there. You have to set up your own domain, or use a domain you already have (see Step 2, above), and you have to install WordPress on it (this step).
6. Register Your Blog at the Main ds106 Web Site
Once your blog is available on the web (it should be almost immediate) register yourself and your new blog on the DS106 site. We will add your blog feed to the course site. You MUST do this in order for everyone to see the posts you’ll be writing for the class.
7. Watch. We will be working with a theme of artificial intelligence this semester, exploring questions like: How can we use AI applications to enhance human creativity in storytelling and making art on the web? Should we use AI at all? What is our role in preventing the apocalypse? Can we save the world from oblivion? In order to inspire our thinking around these questions, we’re asking you to watch an AI related film of your choice. There is a list here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_intelligence_films), and also an overview of AI in fiction here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence_in_fiction). Some can be found through various online services, and some, like Bladerunner, may be available through the Simpson Library. Pick one of the films, watch it and write your thoughts, reactions and reflections in a blog post and tag it film review. Need to know how to add tags in WordPress? There’s a help page for that.
8. What do you want to get out of this course?
This course involves a high degree of self-evaluation, so you should think about your goals at the beginning in order to consider how well you have achieved them down the road. You will have opportunities to re-evaluate your goals along the way, because they may change as we journey through the course.
Many people take this course to fulfill a Gen Ed requirement. This is the official language for the ALPP outcome:
General Education Requirements Learning Outcomes
ARTS, LITERATURE, AND PERFORMANCE –PROCESS
Students will be able to speak about work critically, both process and product.
Students will be able to evaluate the work’s effectiveness in conveying the student’s message or intent and/or achieving the student’s goals.
Students will reflect or explain how they created a work of substance and value.
Students will identify the process to achieve the goals of the creative project,and how successful the process was.
Students will reflect on the value of the creative process.
That is what the University says you have to get out of this course. You will gain experience in producing digital media and discussing your creative processes, and through that discussion, meet these outcomes. You will learn about digital media by producing creative works. You have a great deal of freedom for creative expression in this course though, so I hope that you take advantage of that freedom to achieve something more.
Write a brief blog post on what you think you would like to accomplish with this course. Tag this post ds106goals
9. Write your Weekly Summary
You’ll be completing these summary posts on your blog every week. This week, write a post that shares your reflections on the first week. Tag this post WeeklySummary. Submit the URL for this post to Canvas by Friday at midnight. These posts are REALLY important. We use them to grade you every week, so you need to link to other posts you’ve written, embed media you’ve created, and narrate the process of learning that you went through this week. What did you learn? What was harder than you thought it would be? What was easier? What drove you crazy? Why? What did you really enjoy? Why? NO EXCEPTIONS. NO LATE WORK ACCEPTED.
Welcome to ds106! This first week is dedicated to getting set up: set up your domain and Web hosting; install your WordPress site; and create other social media accounts such as Mastodon, and Discord. The sooner you get started, the better. If you run into trouble after looking through the supporting links, the Digital Knowledge Center is a great place to go for help.
This course will run on the open web. Some people may not be comfortable putting themselves online. You are welcome to create personae and pseudonyms, and you are not required to put any personal information online. You may find it useful to use your web presence as an online portfolio though.
We will be using a general theme of artificial intelligence this semester. The purpose of working with a theme is to give us some common ground for collaboration and interaction. Where we go with this theme will be determined largely by you. We see the topic and tools as offering many options for creative investigation, interaction and expression. As part of our storytelling adventure you will be creating characters which you can use to engage with the course, and to build stories around. More on this next week.
Here is a detailed list of what to do this week:
1. Review the Syllabus
You should carefully read through the syllabus. This course is different from most. The syllabus will help you understand the work and activities of the course. If you have any questions on the content, send them to me via email.
2. Schedule a meeting We want to meet online with everyone in the class during the first two weeks. Sign up for a noon time slot on this form. If none of the times work for you any day, give us some alternate times and we’ll work something out.
3. Password management One skill that will prove critical to keeping up with the various services and accounts you setup over the semester (and life online in general) is a password management tool. There are many, 1Password and LastPass are two of the more popular, but they cost money. So if you are new to password management and don’t want to go out of pocket before you explore the approach, Bitwarden is an excellent, open solution for managing passwords and other keys safely. Managing your logins and passwords effectively will change your online life! This Youtuber will take you through the setup in detail, and trust us, it is worth the time invested
4. Set Up Your Accounts
This course runs on the open web and in various social media venues. I am assuming everyone knows how to be safe online. How you choose to present yourself, or what you choose to present as yourself, is entirely up to you. You will be creating a persona for the course in coming weeks, so you may want to start with a pseudonym here.
a. Domain Sign up for your own domain name and web site (free through UMW’s Domain of One’s Own project). Detailed instructions can be found here. Don’t skip the domain verification step! If you already have a domain through Domain of One’s Own, then you are one step ahead.
b. Mastodon https://social.ds106.us/home Mastodon will be one of our channels for communication in ds106. Send your first message of greeting and be sure to use #ds106 hashtag in your tweets. Follow the #ds106 hashtag.
c. Discord Join the class Discord server. You should have received an invitation email.
5. Install WordPress
You’ll be using this installation of WordPress to share your work every week, all semester. So you’ll want to get this installed and get comfortable with it ASAP. You should install it either at the root of your domain (www.yourdomain.com) or on a subdomain (ds106.yourdomain.com, for example). If you already have WordPress installed on your UMW Domain from another course, you can use your existing site (and just tag or categorize your ds106 work accordingly) or choose to create a new WordPress site in a separate subdomain.
We have three online guides that I recommend you review as you tackle this task:
Brief Introduction to cPanel: This guide will help you learn to navigate cPanel (the control panel for Web hosting on Domain of One’s Own).
Creating Subdomains and Subdirectories (optional): If you want to install WordPress somewhere other than at the root of your domain, check out this guide.
NOTE: Do not use wordpress.com or wix or weebly or tumblr or whatever other third-party services are out there. You have to set up your own domain, or use a domain you already have (see Step 2, above), and you have to install WordPress on it (this step).
6. Register Your Blog at the Main ds106 Web Site
Once your blog is available on the web (it should be almost immediate) register yourself and your new blog on the DS106 site. We will add your blog feed to the course site. You MUST do this in order for everyone to see the posts you’ll be writing for the class.
7. Watch. We will be working with a theme of artificial intelligence this semester, exploring questions like: How can we use AI applications to enhance human creativity in storytelling and making art on the web? Should we use AI at all? What is our role in preventing the apocalypse? Can we save the world from oblivion? In order to inspire our thinking around these questions, we’re asking you to watch an AI related film of your choice. There is a list here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_intelligence_films), and also an overview of AI in fiction here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence_in_fiction). Some can be found through various online services, and some, like Bladerunner, may be available through the Simpson Library. Pick one of the films, watch it and write your thoughts, reactions and reflections in a blog post and tag it film review. Need to know how to add tags in WordPress? There’s a help page for that.
8. What do you want to get out of this course?
This course involves a high degree of self-evaluation, so you should think about your goals at the beginning in order to consider how well you have achieved them down the road. You will have opportunities to re-evaluate your goals along the way, because they may change as we journey through the course.
Many people take this course to fulfill a Gen Ed requirement. This is the official language for the ALPP outcome:
General Education Requirements Learning Outcomes
ARTS, LITERATURE, AND PERFORMANCE –PROCESS
Students will be able to speak about work critically, both process and product.
Students will be able to evaluate the work’s effectiveness in conveying the student’s message or intent and/or achieving the student’s goals.
Students will reflect or explain how they created a work of substance and value.
Students will identify the process to achieve the goals of the creative project,and how successful the process was.
Students will reflect on the value of the creative process.
That is what the University says you have to get out of this course. You will gain experience in producing digital media and discussing your creative processes, and through that discussion, meet these outcomes. You will learn about digital media by producing creative works. You have a great deal of freedom for creative expression in this course though, so I hope that you take advantage of that freedom to achieve something more.
Write a brief blog post on what you think you would like to accomplish with this course. Tag this post ds106goals
9. Write your Weekly Summary
You’ll be completing these summary posts on your blog every week. This week, write a post that shares your reflections on the first week. Tag this post WeeklySummary. Submit the URL for this post to Canvas by Friday at midnight. These posts are REALLY important. We use them to grade you every week, so you need to link to other posts you’ve written, embed media you’ve created, and narrate the process of learning that you went through this week. What did you learn? What was harder than you thought it would be? What was easier? What drove you crazy? Why? What did you really enjoy? Why? NO EXCEPTIONS. NO LATE WORK ACCEPTED.
Hello and welcome to the online, Spring version of Digital Storytelling (CPSC 106). If you are receiving this email, it means you are currently enrolled to take this course in Spring 2024.
Please read this post in its entirety!
The purpose of this post is to orient you to how this course will be run, and to make you aware of the commitment that this course demands.
In short, you will be required to:
set up and manage your own web domain
create digital works in a variety of media
work collaboratively with your classmates on projects
narrate the process of all work – blogging several times per week
comment on classmates’ work – several times per week
do all of this on the open web
All of this work will require a significant commitment of time and effort, but it is easily manageable with good time management. Procrastinate at your peril.
This course is somewhat different from most online classes in that you will be required to narrate your process of learning over the course of the semester. You will be required to setup and manage your own domain and web hosting space (details forthcoming). We plan to experiment with various fediverse services, potentially including Mastodon, PeerTube, etc., so be prepared to create accounts there as well. Note that even though we are running this course on the open web, you are not required to expose any personal information there. Feel free to use a pseudonym if you want. You will be expected to regularly update your own web spaces where you will be installing, designing, and customizing your own site. More specifically, you will be asked to use these spaces to create digital narratives both individually and collaboratively over the course of the semester—so please be prepared to work together.
Also, it is very important to keep in mind that a lion’s share of the course work, and by extension your grade, will be focused around the regular updating of your own site as well as commenting on those of your classmates. We cannot stress strongly enough how essential both posting and commenting are to your success in this course.
Another issue that comes up again and again with this course is the time commitment. We will be creating a variety of narratives across a wide range of media, experimenting with everything from digital photography to digital audio to web video. These forms are often quite complicated and time consuming, and while the students who have taken this class in previous semesters enjoyed the process tremendously, they almost all noted it demands a significant amount of time. If you took this class as a 100-level filler and expect to get by with minimal work or engagement, you will quickly realize that it’s far more than that—and the dangerous part of the course is you will greatly enjoy the work. Don’t be seduced!
The main sites for the course are located at http://ds106.us and https://ds106.ai/. Please go there and take a look around to get a sense of the chaos. The syllabus is online in Canvas. If you have any questions let us know.
Something to keep in mind about that course site is that it may not only include the posts of students from UMW, but also from others beyond the boundaries of our school. ds106 may be taken by people from outside UMW as well as at UMW. Your work as a class will happen alongside other people with a wide experience and interests—some of whom have no association with UMW whatsoever. This serves as a microcosm of the web, we will not be working within a siloed learning management system for this class, rather we will be doing our business out on the open web.
This course is designed to get you to both think about and interact within the digital landscapes and networks that everywhere surround us. Narratives and storytelling provide the frame we need for exploring and experimenting with emerging forms of creative expression in the digital realm as well as means for interrogating the digital environments we are increasingly dependent upon. To this end you will be asked to steward your own website, and one of your first assignments will be to setup your own domain —and by extension your own digital identity.
Before the semester begins you will receive another missive with a link to instructions for getting your own web host, domain, and installing a couple of open source applications. You will also be expected to get accounts on some other sites (details forthcoming) as soon as possible. (Note: we think we all know there are problematic people on the web and on social media. While we haven’t had a problem with them in ds106 in the past, you are perfectly welcome to use pseudonyms for this course if you have privacy concerns.) Additionally, we will be explaining more specifically how this particular version of ds106 will work.
Finally, if you have significant issues with any of the above listed points—which we’re sure some of you do— feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] and/or [email protected].
Earlier today Michael Branson Smith brought his Dr. Oblivion bot to life on the web. Cogdog had the doctor produce an ode to HTML:
Which was great. We had talked about having students submit their work to Dr. Oblivion for feedback, so here was an opportunity to try it out:
That little pause between how and creative is perfect. OK, but what more could I do with this? Well, I could find an open source backing track from bensound that sounded appropriate for beatnik poetry and put it all together:
I hadn’t paid much attention to zines until recently. The Gettin’ Air episode with Dr. Anne Pasek talked about a zine-based conference raised my interest, and then some criticisms of our library brochure led me to slap together to above zine thing. Today I heard about the HTML Zine Club and thought it had possibilities.
I wonder if we might use this with ds106. There is a category for code assignments, but I’ve never done anything with it due to my ineptitude. It could also work under web assignments which I’ve given minimal attention. There is a primitiveness to the zine concept, a punk-rock anyone-can-do-it aesthetic, that suits a basic HTML page.
I was thinking it might work in AI106 as a rebel action – fight back against the machine by taking control of the inner workings, or something like that. It might be a Luddite move, or a way of infiltrating a Luddite group.
If we do it late in the semester it could be a way of bringing together previous work and creations in a low tech way, a handmade web page substituting for a handmade zine, presenting some sort of narrative. It’s something to think about
The good people at Metafilter introduced me to NEEDS MORE BOOM today, which will apparently script Bayhem into any movie scene. My first thought was to see what it would do with Nicholson’s “You can’t handle the truth” scene, which came out okay.
So what might it do with Radio Raheem?
The output is below. Not really what I expected. It somehow feels happier. I’m wondering how this might be used in AI106. Could this be built upon, illustrated and visualized? Sweded? Or made into an audio production?
The Love and Hate soliloquy scene with Radio Raheem in Do the Right Thing
directed by Michael Bay
INT. SAL’S PIZZERIA – NIGHT
The neon sign outside the pizzeria flickers, casting a menacing glow on RADIO RAHEEM’S face as he enters, wielding his BOOMBOX like a weapon.
Raheem’s music clashes with the rock ballad playing inside, causing an eerie dissonance. He’s a tower of a man, decked out in rings. A DRONE shot reveals two rings: one that reads “LOVE”, the other “HATE”.
RAHEEM
You see these? These are my rings.
Sal looks disinterested, wiping down the counter. Raheem turns up the volume on his boombox, causing the chandelier to vibrate.
RAHEEM (CONT’D)
This here is LOVE. And this…HATE.
Suddenly, a low angle shot shows the LOVE ring activate, glowing bright as it projects a holographic story. It’s a modern Romeo and Juliet tale, except with more explosions. Laughter, love, then tragedy.
RAHEEM (CONT’D)
Love always wins. Always.
Sal rolls his eyes. Raheem steps closer, the floor creaking under his weight. The HATE ring activates, projecting an equally explosive war scene filled with missiles and robots.
RAHEEM (CONT’D)
Hate is everywhere. But love? Love is stronger.
Suddenly, the Italian opera aria crescendos, and the ceiling fan spins out of control, then EXPLODES. Everyone ducks for cover.
Sal raises an eyebrow at Raheem, dusting plaster off his apron.
SAL
So what? You a philosopher now?
RAHEEM
Just speaking truth, Sal.
A close-up of the LOVE ring glowing, Raheem slams his fist on the counter. The BOOM causes the plates on the wall to quiver.
RAHEEM (CONT’D)
Love is a powerful thing.
Suddenly, the ground rumbles, and a CAR bursts through the wall, chased by a ROBOT DOG. The two tumble out into the street, causing a fantastic EXPLOSION.
Sal and Raheem look at each other, then back at the wall.
SAL
Well, that was unexpected.
As they walk outside to assess the damage, a small PIZZA BOX near the counter ticks ominously, followed by a tiny, yet impactful EXPLOSION, sending bits of cheese and tomato sauce flying.
The best part of co-teaching, the most fun, is seeing how different ideas come together. As we’re planning AI106, I get to see all the genius conceptions gel, and hopefully make more of my thoughts than I could on my own.
I had a couple ideas coming in. One I touched upon earlier comes from reading Sontag, and Sacasas as well. Storytelling is a fundamental human activity. It is necessary in that it is how we understand the world, and essential in that it is something we’re driven to do. While it may be possible for a tech app to string words together in the form of a story, any deep meaning in the story would come from the human reader rather than the machine generator. When I had ChatGPT create a story outline, it put forth something workable. But it was also too familiar, lacking in any twists or surprises. The output is like an averaging of storylines, squarely targeting mediocrity. I’m not sure how to work this idea into the run of the course, but it may fuel ongoing discussion.
In many iterations of ds106 students created characters that they used to interact with the course and build stories around. We have floated the idea that in AI106 their characters could be human or bots. My second idea borrows from role-playing games. We could have a list of character archtypes, like
Innovator – interested in making new things, trying new things, open to risk and disdainful of guardrails
Regulator – interested in stability and security, approaches risk with great caution
Luddite – militantly values people over property and technology
Mad genius – feels entitled to rule the world by virtue of intellectual superiority
Documentarian – tracks the facts and tells their story
Technician – dedicated to making things work and keeping things running
Artist – sees all tech as paintbrushes and palettes, tools and media for self-expression
Evangelist – dedicated to spreading the good news and preaching the potential, disinterested in drawbacks
Philosopher – works to bring clarity to truth, meaning and ethics
Investor – feels entitled to rule the world by virtue of financial advantage
and have the students fit their characters into one. This could give the students some inspiration and direction, and sets the stage for interaction and plot development while giving the class a lot of latitude to determine where the story goes.
The best part of co-teaching, the most fun, is seeing how