Discussions

Viewing: PlayTime (on Kanopy)

 https://sjsu.kanopy.com/video/playtime 

Reading: Daub, What Tech Calls Thinking

I gave you a sort of weird little book written by a colleague of mine over at Stanford. It says a LOT about San José and Stanford and Silicon Valley (and Harvard, and tech in general). The idea for using it next to this wonderful, funny film from France mid-20th century is to make connections between the ridiculous kinds of "genius" and "innovation" today's tech world trades in and the office building, convenience product, homogenization PlayTime is investigating. Once you've seen the film, you'll see the ideas start to connect, I promise! And really, you can just start reading What Tech Calls Thinking and get at least to the beginning of chapter 1 ("Dropping Out"). Get at least to the moment "San José court" is mentioned in relation to the Elizabeth Holmes story in that chapter, and read more only if you feel like it.

OK, once you have the film and that short bit of reading under your belt, tell us what you make of it all!