Link to “Harmony Living: A Future of Balance and Bliss”
What theoretical underpinnings are evident in our textual architectures and how does this affect one’s experience of the work?
Comparing Jaime’s “Harmony Living” with my own “Flippancy Pill” reveals interesting differences in how we approached the speculative futures assignment. We each made distinct choices about organizing our ideas that reflect different—but equally valid—ways of thinking about technology and society.
Jaime created a thoughtful two-part structure in her work. She first presents Neo-Terra, a beautifully detailed world where technology has enabled social harmony. Her vivid descriptions of “symmetrical yet soft” structures and AI tutors that personalize education create an immersive experience. Then she shifts to analysis, raising important questions about labor displacement and who defines what’s “preferable.” I appreciate how this approach gives readers space to first experience the emotional appeal of technological solutions before considering their potential problems.
Her organization shows a clear commitment to both creative storytelling and critical analysis. By separating these elements, she creates a reading experience that mirrors how we often engage with new technologies in real life—initial excitement followed by deeper consideration of consequences. Her references to Allen, Harari, and Dunne and Raby effectively connect her fictional world to current scholarly conversations.
My “Flippancy Pill” takes a different organizational approach. While writing, I discovered I couldn’t separate the narrative from the critique—they became fundamentally intertwined. This structural choice reflects my interest in how our theoretical assumptions shape our technological interventions. When I described the pill making it “impossible to retreat to the safety of ego-stroking frameworks,” I was trying to blur the line between describing a technology and analyzing its implications.
Through developing this speculative technology, I found myself demonstrating how theoretical assumptions can be embedded within the very design of speculative technologies. The pill itself embodies a philosophical proposition: that people adopt political frameworks based on what intuitively appeals to them rather than objective evidence. The pill functions as a kind of “truth-serum” that makes it impossible to see that your own viewpoint is based on any higher truth. It doesn’t directly make you appreciate opposing viewpoints, but strips away the pretense that your own position—whether social constructionist or naturalist—is grounded in anything more objective than personal preference.
An important critique of this concept asks: “What about those who run an authentic risk of being ostracized for merely thinking about a view that would go against their self-imposed status quo?” This raises fascinating questions about what kind of social breakdown would paradoxically result if people lost their conviction—biased though it may be—in their ideological positions. Group solidarity dissolves because the pill undermines the shared pretense that often forms the basis of group cohesion. The pill relates to the “steel man argument,” though indirectly. While it doesn’t directly make people steel man opposing positions, it creates necessary conditions for such engagement. In the case of a leftist who believes in social constructionism, they would find and elaborate something that seems indubitably “natural” rather than reflexively attributing everything to socialization. The pill makes you confront the most compelling aspects of opposing viewpoints in all their glorious arbitrariness, while simultaneously revealing the arbitrary nature of your own position.
These different choices create distinct reading experiences. Jaime’s clear separation gives readers an organized path through both storytelling and analysis. My approach asks readers to grapple with philosophical questions that arise directly from the speculative concept itself. Both approaches have their benefits—clear structure makes complex ideas accessible, while integration raises immediate questions about what happens when someone faces social ostracism for abandoning their ideological tribe, or how temporary such radical honesty might be.
Neither approach is more innovative than the other. Jaime’s careful separation allowed for both rich world-building and focused critique, while my integration of concept and critique served different purposes. These different approaches simply reflect the range of ways we can think about technological futures—each valuable for what it offers readers.
The contrast between our works demonstrates how the same assignment can generate complementary perspectives, with each contributing something unique to our collective understanding of technology’s role in shaping possible futures.
Link to “Task 10 – Attention Economy”
Isabella’s reflection on the User Inyterface assignment offers an interesting contrast to mine. While I approached the interface primarily as a collection of technical problems to be identified and solved, Isabella framed her experience through accessibility concerns, particularly how her ADHD affected her interaction with the deliberately confounding design.
Her description of the countdown timer creating “genuine anxiety” and her comparison to an “escape room” highlight dimensions I hadn’t considered in my analysis. Where I cataloged the misleading buttons and confusing checkbox placements with a certain detached frustration, Isabella articulated how these elements created actual barriers rather than mere annoyances.
What we both recognized, however, was the deliberate nature of these design choices. Isabella noted how the site was “intentionally designed to manipulate” user responses, which parallels my observation about interfaces that make users “sign away their lives” through seemingly simple interactions.
Perhaps most revealing is our different responses: I stubbornly pushed through despite frustration with the interface, while Isabella made the reasonable choice to walk away. The difference makes me wonder how many people simply can’t access services because of these awful design practices.
Link to “Task 11: Option 2 Text-to-Image”
In Elaine’s post, I noticed key limitations with Copilot’s image generation that didn’t come up during my fusion cuisine tests. When she tried to get Copilot to create a visual of S&P 500 historical data, it failed entirely – revealing that these tools simply can’t handle factual data representation, no matter how clearly you ask.
Her results provide an interesting contrast to my own work. While I was exploring creative food combinations, Elaine’s post shows something more fundamental about these image generators – they can’t function as search engines or data visualization tools, even for straightforward requests.
I think what’s happening with that S&P chart attempt is we’re seeing the outer edges of what an image generator can do when asked to be a search tool. Reading the writer’s thoughts, I totally agree when they say: “It is doubtful if AI generates image from capturing key words from instruction instead of thinking the logic behind, the purpose of the instruction but rather mechanical.” Then she tried to get an image for her twins and it came out with an image for 3 boys, so it wasn’t even good at analyzing specific words. Similarly, in my fusion food prompts, the AI grabbed onto obvious terms like “sushi” and “Mexican” but missed how these should actually work together – revealing a shallow pattern-matching incapable of grasping the deeper logic or purpose.
I was surprised by their discovery about word order – putting “1 year old” before versus after “twin boys” completely changed what the AI produced. When I was experimenting with food imagery, I didn’t test how word sequence might affect my results.
I found it interesting that we both independently discovered the same keyword fixation issue despite working with totally different content types.
Link to “Task 9: Networking Assignment Using Palladio & Golden Record Quiz Data”
Thomas raises some interesting questions about the factors that might shape our music selections: educational background, culture, and so on. These dimensions certainly influence how we engage with music.
Looking at my own experience with the network visualization compared to Thomas’s, I noticed something peculiar. I ended up being somewhat of an outlier, but the reason for this was simple and at the same time had very interesting implications. My position as an outlier had little to do with unique musical taste; it had to do with missing the YouTube reference page with the standardized names. Had I based my curation assignment on that page, I would have understood that I was expected to choose 10 songs, and not the spoken word pieces (one of which incorporated whale sounds).
This realization connects to Thomas’s discussion about similar choices. What appears in the visualization as meaningful difference in preferences might actually reflect nothing more than procedural differences in how we approached the task. When we extend this insight beyond our classroom, we can see how what looks like preference or choice in data visualizations might actually reflect unequal access to information or resources. Procedural differences in data collection often mirror deeper systemic barriers that divide populations along lines of privilege and access. In this way, marginalization can be reinforced by data. You may be in a position where you are representing a privileged interpretation—but it may not just be an interpretation, it may be an actual systematic, structural exclusion.
In educational settings like those Thomas mentions, we are often encouraged to use the data, but in doing that it’s important for us to consider the upstream factors that could lead to a certain “skewing” of the data. This awareness is crucial if we want to use these visualization tools in ways that reveal rather than reinforce existing power dynamics in learning environments.
Link to “Task 4: Potato Printing”
Patrick’s culinary skills really came through for this task. 10 minutes to do the cutting work? Only?! I laboured for two hours. He deliberately went with block letters and capitalization, while I was naturally drawn to curvature; out of some preconceived notion that simulating antiquity necessitated waves and flourishes? Pesky random flecks kept appearing in what should have been clean exterior spaces in my prints. Meanwhile, Patrick mentioned challenges with paint application and consistency. I kind of like the texture of his prints, the way the paint pools at certain edges of the letter and thins out elsewhere.
Patrick approached the assignment viewing each step as a hurdle to overcome and seemed fine with the results not being perfect. But I was not quite so easy-going, perhaps because I had put in so much elbow grease. Luckily, my wife brilliantly suggested stamping each letter twice, as the shorter interval would keep the muscle memory fresh. This makes me wonder: did Patrick go the proper route, stamping the whole word out before attempting the new word?
Patrick wished he had done the task with his son – my kids were interested, but seeing the tedium, elected not to participate. They were, however, thrilled with the finished product. The stamping was a lot of fun for them. Patrick also spoke approvingly of how printing enables efficient word dissemination. I was also appreciative of how much easier printing is than letter production by hand. The rigor of what they went through in the past is truly astonishing.
Link to “Task 3: Voice to Text Task”
Both Justine’s post and my post focused on how transcription captures the unique qualities of storytelling – features that would ideally, if not always, be smoothed out in written text. I paid particular attention to things gone awry such as structure and tense shifts; Justine focused on fillers, repetition and the like. Both of us, I guess, were somewhat disparaging of speech. Why is it that writing should be treated any more formally?
But this makes me wonder: why does writing have a privilege over speaking? It’s my understanding that Derrida has written many books about this. So maybe I was completely wrong to suggest that these are deviations, because it’s clear that the written word has long since enjoyed privilege of place.