Join the Critical Tech Talk series to hear guest speaker Sherryl Vint, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, on how speculative fiction can help us cultivate a more inclusive social imagination. This event will take place on Zoom.
About the talk
Speculative fiction (sf) is an influential mode that shapes how we imagine what technologies and futures we find desirable, feasible, and valuable. But whose values inform imagined techno-utopian futures? How can we draw on the power of sf if we understand the genre not as a storehouse of technologies we might one day create, but instead as a critical engagement with the way that technology inevitably shapes the social world in ways that extend far beyond its intended use? Using the example of the intersection of sf with disability studies, this talk will outline how sf can function as a mode of enquiry, a rhetorical tool that can help us guide technological development toward greater inclusion and equity by opening new perspectives on the problems technology seeks to solve. Focusing on the specific example of sf written from the perspective of people with disability, it will show how such fictions can help us understand how to cultivate a more capacious social imagination as a crucial element of equitable and inclusive technological design.
About the speaker
Sherryl Vint is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies and of English at the University of California, Riverside, where she founded the Speculative Fictions and Cultures of Science program. She has published widely on science fiction, including, most recently, Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First Century Speculative Fiction (2021), Science Fiction: The Essential Knowledge (2021), and Programming the Future: Speculative Television and the End of Democracy (2022, co-authored with Jonathan Alexander). She was a founding editor of Science Fiction Film and Television and is the Managing Editor of Science Fiction Studies and editor of book series Science in Popular Culture.
Respondents
Dr. Lauren Judge is an interdisciplinary geographer currently working as a Research Associate at Wilfrid Laurier University. Originally from Kitchener, Ontario, she completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at York University (2003), a Master of Arts at the University of Waterloo (2005), and her PhD at Wilfrid Laurier University (2024). Since 2009, Lauren has practiced professionally as a visual artist who experiments with painting on canvas and paper and multimedia installations that include handmade textiles, ceramics and mosaics. Lauren's research and arts practice explores subjects like ecofeminism, more-than-human world-making, speculative futures and the pluriverse.
Liahm Ruest, MA, BSc (UWaterloo) is an MSc candidate in Biology at the University of Waterloo. They have previously completed their MA in Rhetoric and Communications Design, focusing on science communications. They are currently working on urban ecology projects within the interdisciplinary RISE (Residential Development Impact Scorecard for the Environment) project. Their research interests are biodiversity in cities, the rhetoric of science, and photography in science communication. Their current research uses metagenomics and environmental DNA to classify biota in urban stormwater systems.
Moderator
Dr. Marcel O'Gorman, University Research Chair, professor of English, and founding director of the Critical Media Lab (CML), University of Waterloo. Professor O'Gorman leads collaborative design projects and teaches courses and workshops in the philosophy of technology at the CML, which is located at the Communitech Hub. The role of the CML is to disseminate a philosophy of "tech for good."