Technology

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Smart Guns

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"Who Killed the Smart Gun?" -- Motherboard, 2017, 43:37 -- https://youtu.be/sXtqBVbxmto

Yes, there is such a thing as a "smart" gun, a gun that only the owner can fire, though it is not without a great deal of controversy. Some people fear technological failures, others fear government interference of their Second Amendment right, yet the fear of losing individual control of the firearm seems to pervade everyone. This 43-minute documentary explores the debate around these guns and reveals to us the social dynamics at play.   

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Measuring Gender Bias in Movies

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Google-backed AI Measures Gender Bias in Movies -- The Verge, 2017, 2:36 -- https://youtu.be/jsVZSUIv_iI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being used to measure speaking time on screen between male and female characters. Results indicate that men get significantly more lines than women. For example, if looking at just the 2016 Oscar-nominated films, men speak 73% of the time and women 27%. This is similar to the Bechdel-Wallace Test to measure gender bias, which asks three questions: (1) Does the film contain at least two named female characters (2) who talk to each other (3) about something other than a man? Less than 60% of films pass the Bechdel Test.

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Science in Film

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The Hotline Hollywood Calls for Science Advice -- Vox, 2017, 5:42 -- https://youtu.be/rXMQuHmh-3w

How accurately is science represented in popular film and television? This short video explores an organization dedicated to providing accurate scientific information to movie makers. While it would be nice if they touched a bit more on social science, we see here issues related to scientific representation and valid facts. There's an excellent bit on implicit biases as well. 

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Deaf Culture

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Death Culture -- Vice News, 2017, 5:18 -- https://youtu.be/wLDM2pPYoOs

"Today, more than 40 percent of American children born deaf receive cochlear implants. The technology effectively restores hearing by bypassing the ear and delivering audio information directly to the brain. The vast majority of deaf children who are implanted develop hearing and speaking skills comparable to their hearing peers, thus allowing them the option to “mainstream” into normal schools.
Deaf education in the U.S. has gone through many phases. American Sign Language (ASL) is currently the dominant mode of instruction in deaf schools, but there have been periods where ASL was banned and students were forced to speak and lip-read, an ineffective approach known as oralism. ASL has now gained legitimacy and been shown to include the deep grammar and syntax found in spoken languages. It is also the wellspring of deaf culture, a proud community wary of historical attempts to assimilate them into a hearing world.
As more parents opt for cochlear implants, VICE News explores their impact on the medical condition that gave rise to a cultural identity".

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Internet Surveillance in Britain

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Invasive Intelligence -- Vice News, 2017, 3:07 -- https://youtu.be/qyT-h4MsedI

“A new law going into effect in the U.K. gives the British government sweeping new surveillance capabilities. The Investigatory Powers Act grants intelligence agencies and local authorities the right to access the internet history of any British citizen they target. It may be the most extreme surveillance act in the Western world. Later this year, the British government will be able to require internet service providers to record the websites and messaging applications their customers visit and keep that information for one year. The data will then be available for use by 48 different national and local authorities without the need for a warrant”. 

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Whitey on the Moon (Throwback)

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Whitey on the Moon -- Gil Scott-Heron, 1983, 2:06 -- https://youtu.be/otwkXZ0SmTs

A timeless classic from poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron, originally written in 1970. This is a version from the 1983 film Black Wax. I think this holds up to a modern audience where we currently talk about sending people to Mars and beyond, all while we continue to look away from the social problems faced by minority populations. #BlackLivesMatter

From Alexis C. Madrigal writing for The Atlantic: "Whitey on the Moon," changed the way I thought about the space race forever. It anchored the flight into the heavens, tethering it to the persistence of racial inequality, and pulling it out of the abstract, universal realm in which we like to place our technical achievements. Though I still think the hunger for the technological sublime crosses racial boundaries, it destabilized the ease with which people could use "our" in that kind of sentence. To which America went the glory of the moon landing? And what did it cost our nation to put whitey on the moon?

Here is another version of the poem: https://youtu.be/PtBy_ppG4hY

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Sex, Sexuality, and Technology

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"Crush", Dark Net (S1 Ep1) -- Showtime, 2016, 28:09 -- https://youtu.be/vo3xUGJIDY4

Available for free for a limited time-- This episode explores how technology and the Internet affected our sexual relationships through 3 vastly different profiles, all loaded with data for context. The couple who met on a BDSM fetish website introduces us to the concept of pervertables and raises questions surrounding consent; the young man in Japan who is in love with Rinko, a character on his Nintendo 3DS, challenges our typical notions of a relationship; and the young woman who had her nude photos posted to over 2,000 revenge porn websites with no legal framework to turn to for help. All of these stories highlight social problems related to sex in our digital world.     

Original Source: http://www.sho.com/dark-net/season/1/episode/1

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Racist Technology

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Color Film Was Built For White People -- Vox, 2015, 4:39 -- https://youtu.be/d16LNHIEJzs

Despite the popular view that technological advancement will one day solve all of our social problems, here we can clearly see that technology reflects and perpetuates inequalities in a society. The focus of this clip is on color film but it concludes with how our cultural bias for lighter skin is embedded in modern facial recognition technology.  

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Modern Urban Policing and Surveillance

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Surveillance City -- Vice Media, 2014, 15:00 -- https://youtu.be/fVDvJCeCe54

Here is a frightful manifestation of broken windows policing taken to the extreme. We see a police force largely composed of non-natives to the city set up a panoptical surveillance system in an attempt to combat crime. The city's residents, who were alienated from the decision-making process here, feel as if their community has been invaded by this new police force. Although the crime rate drops slightly, is it worth the social damage to the community?

“Camden, New Jersey is one of the poorest and most drug-ridden cities in the country; its murder rate is 12 times the national average. In 2011, the city cut its police force almost in half, with nearly 80,000 residents regularly being policed by 12 cops at a time. The state stepped in to overhaul the department, introducing an experimental “Metro” security apparatus equipped with futuristic technologies like gunshot detecting, triangulation microphones, and automatic license-plate readers. As similar surveillance systems are implemented across the country, Vikram Gandhi went to Camden to see how these tactics are working, how residents feel about their loss of privacy, and what the future of policing looks like.”
— http://www.hbo.com/vice/episodes/02/22-surveillance-city-the-forgotten-war/synopsis.html
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Surveillance Camera Man

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Why Does Everyone Hate Surveillance Camera Man? -- The Verge, 2014, 5:27 -- https://youtu.be/X9sVqKFkjiY

This fascinating video asks a question ripe for sociological analysis-- Why do we accept structural or institutional surveillance but reject individual surveillance? Are they not the same thing? In an age where cameras are ubiquitous this issue lends itself to a discussion students find engaging and meaningful. You can use this to discuss levels of analysis (institutions vs individuals), power and social control (active vs. passive surveillance), the law's ability to keep pace with technological development (personal drones, for instance), and much more...