Now that you have a specific technology to examine, in this stage, you will answer a series of questions to help you start thinking about how technology functions in the world and what impacts, biases and technological politics s it may have.
Address each of the following questions in about 2-4 sentences. Be sure to refer to specific aspects or elements of your artifact to illustrate your answers and to your resource(s). Use at least three resources for your information from the UMGC library. If no sources are available on this topic in the library, make sure you are using reliable resources such as trade magazines, verifiable historical information, information from the item’s website etc. Avoid personal blogs, product reviews, promotional, marketing or advertising materials etc. If you have any questions about a resource, please contact your instructor.
Who created and designed this technology? What are the demographics of the creators? Use at least one reliable resource about inventors, designers, programmers, planners or the company to answer this question. Also, if appropriate, consider if there is a contested history about who invented the artifact.
Provide a very brief history of this technology. How long has it been around? What significant changes has it gone through over the years?
According to your observations of this technology in its context, who uses, depends on or interacts with this technology the most? Who uses, interacts or depends on it the least? Who never uses, interacts or depends on it or does not have easy access to it? Why?
Based on your observations of this technology in its environment, who seems to benefit from this technology the most? Who might have difficulty benefitting from it and why? What kinds of built-in biases might this technology have due to who benefits from it?
Briefly describe one possible change to the design, location, programming or planning of this technology that could change who uses it and/or who can benefit from it.
