TASK 12:  Shaun

My final link is to Shaun’s depiction of Speculative Futures.  I found this to be the most challenging task to complete.  The learning materials were engaging and fascinating, but I struggled to think of how take what I had learned about speculative futures and turn it into a narrative.  I also wanted to supplement my task with some sort of visual component and kept hitting a wall when thinking about the narrative component.   

Shaun found a way to combine these elements in a very creative way in his post.  He used Adobe Captivate and Adobe Premier Pro to create a video presenting two different speculative futures.  His first narrative was about the potential for immersive technology to drastically impact the way medical students are taught, and his second was about the potential of computer-based assessments to support personalized learning.  He noted that he began by looking at both of these scenarios from a utopian perspective, and this came through clearly.  He describes a future in education benefitting from technology, where medical students can experience “real life” stressful situations, studies that have potential ethical issues can be carried out in a virtual world, and intelligent tutors can support student learning.  The potential is limitless!   

My approach to this task was quite different, as I focused on how technology that could be beneficial could also be manipulated to create a much less utopian speculative future.  In my task I describe a future where technology is used to make the dining out experience safer and healthier, but in a grimmer reality this same technology limits what people can eat based on pre-existing health conditions, or determines whether they are even allowed entry in the first place.  I found it easy to create this nightmare scenario, which I think reflects my hesitancy in adopting technology without considering the potential negative impacts.  For example, I have barely tipped my toe in the pool of social media, preferring to keep my life private and my thoughts to myself.  I also interpreted the term “narrative” very loosely, and used Canva to create the restaurant menus in my imaginary scenario.  The “narrative” would be to imagine someone visiting a restaurant in the future. 

I found it really interesting when Shaun mentioned that as he completed this task he began to reflect on the disadvantages or risks to the technologies he had described in his video.  He asks the question: 

Are the advantages of them worth more than their disadvantages or risks? 

This is the very same question that drove my speculative future, as I believe all technology does come with some risks.  Clearly rejecting technology is not the answer, but the speculative futures task demonstrates that approaching new technologies critically has merit.