Good afternoon everyone I can see that our promotional efforts appear to have succeeded and we're very grateful that you've made some time this Thursday afternoon to come and. Listen to a panel from the text book communication. Right unification and our topic has imagined futures through technical community so the future we're making it right now and I'm going to be a part of. Her mind without making my power point that one of our schools lives created here so I think that we're very much in the ether of Georgia Tech and that's the facade on innovation and scientific and technical fields so. Our panel this evening will look at a particular book in particular how students at Georgia Tech will become animators within their field but how will these innovations transform the landscape we're trying to change. How do new and emerging technologies change how we view. The same time we go out. And technological horizon and our panelists from all introduce in a moment will share back to us from areas the verses assign the technologies and science fiction and I'll introduce our panelists now we have Dr Carl the south of he did just raise your hand. And he's an associate professor in the school of literature media and. Carl salvo directs the public design workshop his first book adversarial design was published by MIT Press in two thousand and twelve and Professor the Salvos experimental design work has been exhibited and supported by the Z K M Science Gallery in Dublin the Walker Arts Center for second panelists house. Laurents. Think how see I might be. Scary in about trying to get. Over. How to research the speech and build and design a speech interactions for the technology. And solve works right here. Passionless to help organize organizations achieve their technical communication goals son I'm also a prisoner My name is Joseph we fund I'm a Marian Britain post-doctoral fellow as is how and part of my research centers on how writers use science fictional plot processes in order to explore the rhetorical possibilities opened up by merging technology this is. And it collection that I'm working on that same under contract with the University of Utah press. So I'm going to go first and try to flesh out what these topics and tell what is the site. For those of you who are handing over the whole section of course like teaching I have a sign up sheet and I'm going to pass that around a little bit. So. Thank you again for attending and we'll have an opportunity for you to sign in to confirm your attendance and we certainly appreciative. OK So there's also a handout that is for my presentation that's going around you'd like to look. Around hopefully I printed enough of them. And again here is our theme. And for my talk I'm going to try to help us make the concept for a little bit more concrete. By talking about the role that speculation play and communicating about science and technology human about something. And I'm going to talk about examples. Speculated in the field and acknowledge and deal with your side. Now I. Think. And when I use the term speculation I'm using that kind of loosely but why. Is cases where scientists psychologists practitioners and you'll hear about possible futures for their work or experience with my. Side all the sides for new. Technologies. And they just say it's the old others and their field and decide that's members of. Why this is the right side of the road or even when scientists and engineers paid by this group to a large public that would be a crucial responsibility of academics working within a technical university as well as a responsibility of technical community if you were last Likewise with me to proceed said here sides of the past two semesters you've been working to write boxes of that you're about the right body and says And often you're making things that capital process and you know we're in a maze of new and you're trying to indicate that new development to people so that they understand it so that they support it you know how to use it they might want to find it and so on. So. In order to talk about. Communicating about the future I'm going to step a little bit into the past. And if you have your hand out the first thing I want to talk about is. An essay five the physicist Richard fine. It's called there's plenty of word of the Bob And this was an essay that is based on top of it Richard you do you are very well I. Am a patient as an invitation interviewed you. So. People who are familiar with you with all of the you'll. Understand. And believe matter and will believe you are. All of these people within this field the story the science site finalists assayers when your group of bodies one of the foundational hires a tax with your. Power to make our lives were people. Search Party. Historically more of the seal. Finder the subtitle for this talk is an invitation to enter a new field of good and I think means field in terms of an academic you write making and technologies that academics by this or Big every policy require of you. Also if you want to help this audience and have pissed spades in. The space of life and all that you want to have audience understand why God. My kids quite deliberately are right with your weight when we count bad manners top of the scale curse of the hour we experience the material world and our kind of every day macro scale and what he does in order to help his audience some action the possibilities for story relationships and. This is how I'm quite tired yes I. See the facts are there. He walks the audience through this or I will cost you where he loses it so here are the possible bit it's like sure. There was. This and I was like. Yeah obviously gesturing for states like. Florida really small. You know certainly some of these a site used to manufacture a fire. Power about the banks of. Your yard. And the letter words that all the information you are saying is that you're a loser all the way why for. The. Record You know better he flipped out. So what I like about this is that it's a great example of technical communication great example of this is just trying to help with the use of disappears under sail what we want to say scientifically about yours or a. Man who you know it's your it was Bill you need. And he thought of looking to write. Write. Write. About possibilities of. Why he. Will I said. And you can see here one of the things that Feynman does in his essay is a he issues a challenge for someone to write part of his essay on the head of a pen or an incredibly small volume and you can see an example here this kind of attribute. Another thing that Fineman does that scholars have pointed out is that he later in the essay ha ha we have the need. And racked with. Something is. Keen. And. Some scholars are you could call this is it for radiation proof that. The story by Robert Heinlein. Where. There. Is a fire truck that built a satellite time and is. A. Satellite from the small up. This national scopic scale. Another interesting example that is sort of derived from this tradition is I.B.M. several years ago made a film. Paula pointed out and I quote This is of world's smallest stop motion film and they use a technique subtler to force posture and that is your actual or not optical images but there are trying to reduce by a very sensitive story this being one of the surface of the user. So what I like about this is obviously I am. No major computing the manufacturer computer systems they are trying to reach a particular audience to explain what we're looking for as a lead separation story this is where. Our Lives and molecules and these cases those three didn't rush it right or that you know and instead of just how do you get out there I actually made. Create a British built. I have a very different example now but many similarities and this will be perhaps adventurous to students who are in the same report for a while or three courses this is another I say where's there's so little. That's why uses the computer for the twenty first century. And work wise it was credited with. Big with just computing there's pervasive Yeah. You guys. Were. Just for your passion that you know you were just coming out yes popular and back in a gated. Community. How you can see her back right. There was. He was right. Rhode Island or the audiences here and a lot of years possibly this essay here. It's like. Serve Wiser's that's. What. I find right it's like. Hospitals Mark Weiss are books that I need as an example but. So proud of my. Writing. About. Your. Job. That's. Part of this. Life of Your Life. Is your day. And Wiser's essay he has a matching many of the hardware elements that we now take for granted. Sorry. He's imagining many of the hardware elements that we now take for granted like computer tablets. You know right away great. Whites are. His vision. Technology. More men than was her. He in this essay. Has a section that writes science fictional yet little short stories about why. It will be. Pretty big. And it's like. Why. How big is our capital. And right this is. How to read for this. Reason there are facts. In order for you understand how this. Or. How I go about my activity. So another example of leading thinker in his field his or her field using speculative techniques in order to communicate about the possibilities of scientific or technological development. And something that recently has made this technique even more explicit is Brian Johnson who is a futurist at Intel technology. About this concept of a science fiction. Short story or a specific. Fact for the purpose. So. You look at the second page of the handout. On the right part or. For him to use science fiction prototypes and Mars has fewer. Hands. Are. You sure. We're all right. However what shape you. Are to support. More people than I will. So hopefully that has frightened you some examples of a concept for helping you understand what we mean by imagining futures through Technical Communication an example from nanotechnology an example from computer science and a methodology here in science fiction prototyping in our two remaining panelists how one car will have different takes on this there are different disciplines than I am hopefully will see some similarities emerge. OK Well good afternoon everyone my name is house in Lawrence and as Joe mentioned I. Found the right communication group around my peers in the area technical communication and I want to make sure that we have a team back to National Technical Communication very easily on it in this talk. So I teach just like July T.J. You know. The communication courses in the College of computing and my specific area of research that they have to do with speech technology. Particularly when it comes to mobile devices like cell food but also devices that we interact with on a simple devices that we interact with on a daily basis whether the. Be a G.P.S. or a talking full no we pull up to. A recent times I've been realizing that more and more of the parking meter. Capabilities as well so I'm going to be talking about speech and speech that knowledge and what. That community about the. Logic of development. Not start out with a definition of technical communication so the side effect. Of a couple of them. About technical or specialized topics such as hospital such sorry specialized topics hospitals such as computer applications magic country C.D.'s. I think something got switched around Sorry I probably is magical and hospital perceive us or environmental regulations and then a second definition working definition is computing by using technology such as web page Help files and social media sites I find these two to be very interesting definitions because on the one hand this is a side effect of communication is suggesting that when we are talking about technical issues and technical matter it is a form of technical communication and on the other hand when you are using technology to communicate we are also talking about technical communication so we talk I have to create the. Very. Definition so. Last. Year. Let me. See the easiest to. You. Will. Receive he. Was. A little bit. This a. Few. Years. He. Was. The. Fish. In the. Really. You get all. The. Coffee. You. Know you eat. The tree it. Was to. Me the ease. With. Which. He was. Using. He. And it. Hit. Me. He did. It because. He. Was looking at. Me he. Used to be said. To. Receive. He. Was. He. Says. He. Was. Just. Recently. He. Says he. Thinks it was. The. British media. He. Was. Very. Seriously. He. Says. He. Uses for. The. Week. He. We're. Here. It. Has to be. It. Was. To be this week. To. Really be. Here Christmas. Day this thing. Has been. Really really really. Well. Written piece of. Junk. Food. Really. The. Way. You. Say. This it. Was a. Week. The. Commute. For years this. Year is. To bridge he told. The. Media which the structure. Was or. Was. Immediately he was. Ordered. To really see. How the street. Was. The streets look. To see this all the cars to be the. Reason. On the week or. Two or what was. This. Was. Just this week. The shines out there. Is the week you will see it. Is. Easy to be so. Struck me was. Well received it was me. On this. Wish. I was. Being told the. Result me to be where. He. Was so I was the. Only so if you very. Humble. The week I. Received. This. Was. Years. We were looking. For it. To. Be. Humorous. All of it was to. Come. In. All. This. Was a. Part of. Me. Was. This to me. It was really you. Know our. Natures issued. These. Pieces the way it was if it. So easy to believe. She. Was the spirit. Here. You. In this is my. Feeling. Was. How proud. He. Was. That you can. See. This is. The way. It is very swiftly. Looking down to the group it. Was. Obvious. That it gives us. A. Bit about. A week before the plan. Was. So. So see Professor. Media and. Communication and I'm going to talk about this idea of speculative design so as a way of a little bit of background. I study and do design work very similar to the things that we've just seen so there is mention of Brian David Johnson and sort of work of Futurists at Intel and in fact that's a lot of my work is currently sponsored by Intel looking at the ways in which future. Communication technologies can be configured for social and political ends including I'm actually having just coming back from a two day workshop talking about Ted and some of the failures Twitter bots. So. What I want to talk about their market share and in my my own labs work but I'm going to talk to you about this idea of speculation in design which is a way of doing design work that's actually somewhat unfamiliar to the Georgia Tech design and engineering culture and that is fundamentally actually about problem solving and we'll get to that in a in a few minutes where we see that this is a kind of design work that sees its role of the role of designers as being about something very different than problem solving and instead asking questions about what the future might be and doing it in a way that's very informed by science fiction but instead of saying how do we write texts that help us imagine what the future might be saying how do we make things that help us imagine what the future might be and in the same way that science fiction whether it's television or film war stories brings us face to face with some of the conundrums of our present technological condition and then also future ones that by working as designers by building systems we can do a similar sort of thing that has a slightly different relationship to us. So I'm going to explore that through some examples. And talk a little bit about what spec of design. It is and trends that are happening in this practice. And they're the shortest possible histories so one of the things to know when thinking about imagining the future and imagining the future through design is that it's not a new thing we now have designers working as Futurists in organizations like Intel and Microsoft and organizations like NASA for that matter these are actually not new practices the role of design in imagining futures and using the techniques of design and engineering to represent those futures is decades old. And in fact some of the best places to look for the origins of this is in the work of architecture and urbanist in the one nine hundred sixty S. So this is an image from a collective called Archigram this is an image that was made in the one nine hundred sixty S. called Walking sixty's from one thousand nine hundred four an arc a crane was a group of architects who were interested in the role technology would play in the city and they began asking questions like What would it look like if our cities themselves were robots and so what they did is they produced conceptual drawings architectural drawings that tried to represent that and that's what you see here so on the one hand we might look at this and say this looks awfully naïve right like this looks like something maybe I did in middle school on the back of a notebook. Or whatever the case may be but it's important to know that forty years ago fifty years ago. These are architects working with then contemporary tools of drafting and collage making in fact working with what were then actually sort of far out tools of saying how can we use media representations and cut them out and paste them up and make collages of what architecture might look like of what urban planning my look like and how do we use the then modern tools of design to imagine what this future might be and to do it in the same visual and representation. Forms that other architects do so we're not seeing here a skyline of New York as we might think about it if we put a skyscraper in there but we're seeing the same kind of representation but instead an imagination of what that might look like with robots and. Similarly other kinds of work was being done in the sixty's and seventy's this is a project by super studio which was the idea of a continuous monument that would wrap the earth and again you see the architects and urbanist using a combination of materials that are familiar to them and drawing so if any of you are in architecture or industrial design you know that you spend a lot of time drawing and in certain engineering fields as well again media collage the use of different views right so this sort of aerial view also very contemporary in the late sixty's and using This is a way to imagine what the different sort of architectural structure might be. So what's interesting is for decades this primarily took place in the fields of architecture and at the scale of buildings and at the scale of cities and one of the reasons we would argue that's the case is because it's not really until the late one nine hundred ninety S. that designers and engineers get involved in technology in an intimate way it's really with the birth of Apple and groups like the Advanced Technology Group at Apple that designers and mechanical engineers. Industrial Designers. Writers are brought together to begin to work with computing technologies in really significant ways in ways that are kinda architecture in ways that are about more than just wrapping a beige box on it really thinking about experience abuse. So that begins to happen again late eighty's early ninety's and then by the late ninety's you do begin to see a kind of speculative practice emerging in the fields of industrial design and interaction design and human computer interaction. And whether ways that first comes to the fore is through a term called critical design which is a term that's still in use today and was really pioneered by a group of designers that were operating primarily out of London at the time and exploring how design might be differently structured what might designers do that was not just about serving industry in the way they always have but about thinking about design as a way of asking questions and the best way to think about this is this is. What's called the A.V. manifesto by Fiona Raby and Tony Done that was produced in well this person's from two thousand and nine and what they're doing is they're comparing on the left the kind of way we might typically think about design and engineering affirmative problem solving process provides answers and service to industry with proposals they're making for how we might do design differently that it's critical that it's problem finding we think about design as a medium something ask questions in service of society rather than in industry. And begins to shift the way that designers create products and services in the world. To probe like we saw with architects how life might be different. As we move into this technological moment. So Fiona Raby and Tony Don are two of the people who pioneered this and some other early work in the way they became most known for was looking at the idea of her see in space so the ways and the other kinds of electromagnetic space so the ways in which our devices that we carry around in the world with us or that exist like this or why find networks create. Waves of material that are unseen but that are part of our environment and they begin asking questions like how do we think about designing in the context of that of this of this residue or rather maybe even the infrastructure that's necessary which I mean to design in the context of that and what is it mean to do it in a way that's critical. Doesn't necessarily affirm it but begins to ask questions and the first project that they become known for is a project called the placebo project and here you see a series of drawings from the placebo project again designers working with the mediums that they're used to each of these is a piece of furniture piece of interactive furniture that interacts with her teen space differently so on the far right hand side you see something that looks like a table that table had a G.P.S. unit that when you set it outside you know to have a cup of tea or whatever you might be doing in your garden he would tell you its location and when you moved it inside it would tell you that it was lost and begin to try to ask you to find out where it was because it wasn't getting a G.P.S. signal they also began to create things to say how might we not want to encounter this and so one of the products that they created is this shield and what they did here so this is a foam shield. The idea was that users who were perhaps negatively attuned to her space perhaps afraid of this might actually use this to shield them from those kinds of waves and what they're beginning to do here is you can imagine this is part of a science fiction story but rather than writing this out as a tale they've created a prop and slightly differently than what the architects did because we're dealing with a different scale of design it's no longer just about the imagery it's no longer just about the drawing but it begins to become this question about how do we actually produce objects in the world that people can use and live with and experiment with. And this really becomes the impulse for critical design and speculative design not just how do we make representations. But how do we create actual products and services that people might experiment with. Lots of the starts off in the field of information and communication technologies and fields like interaction design and human computer interaction and it begins to change as the field of what designers are doing also begins to change begins. Increasingly engaged with biotechnology. One of the students done and ready to be carriage in mid early two thousand begins a series of projects that he calls bio jewelry So these are rings that are actually made they're made from taking human bone samples your human bone samples and grafting them into rings and the idea would be that you and your partner rather than just exchanging sort of normal bits of metal would in fact go and have cells extracted have casts made and have rings made of your own bone material that you would transfer from one another so Toby parents was really interested in this question about how do we begin thinking about bio materials as designed materials and how do we do it not just imagine of way but how do we actually create products that we might use and share with one another. In very sort of intimate conditions. Over time the idea of what specular design has been about began as these sort of smaller scale intimate encounters How do I create something that I might use that you might use that we might have our friends use a lot of early sort of art and gallery type showings and then one of the questions the began to interest these designers is could we work together with scientists and engineers in the fields like public understanding and public engagement with science and technology fields that in fact have long been kin to ideas of communication can we explicitly as designers explore what it means to work with science and engineering professionals to actually manifest their research in different ways. And what happens in this role this is one thing. People used back to design together with science and they have this idea of the designer is it which I will come back to momentarily. In the mid two thousand a large scale exhibition is supported that ends up being really fundamental to the development of spec of design called material beliefs material police brought together. About half a dozen different designers to work with scientists and engineers in the U.K. as part of a Public Understanding of Science Program to say what happens if we pair these designers doing speculative work doing design fiction together with actual researchers what might they create and can they create artifacts that allow the public to imagine what the value of the science might actually be five ten years out. So dozens and dozens of things are made and funded in really interesting ways one of the ones that I'm my favorite to talk about is a piece by James auger called the fly paper robot So James working with us is to is interested in how decaying matter could actually use for energy for robots so you know batteries are expensive figuring out battery power is a difficult thing to do if we can use decaying matter to actually power robots how would that change the kinds of things in which we designed so James was work with this scientist and they actually created a claw that we're. Like flies on the backside there's a scraper the takes them off and turns the flies into fuel that actually passed enough to power a small clock. This product was sponsored by. Microsoft so of us we think that this is all just sort of silly our projects these pop projects are sponsored by Microsoft as a way for them to actually think about what might our Home Products be like in the future if we imagine what these new technologies might be how do we combine them together in ways that make them not not actually into fiction not into a movie not into a T.V. show but into a product into something that appears in the store that we consume that we live with like how do we imagine the future that way. One of the things that comes out of this that also becomes notable is that we begin to see a movement back to the design of a. A from just making objects to actually studying objects so not only does this exhibition produce a large scale number of things that are sponsored by corporations such as Microsoft it also begins to produce a series of of actual research documents documents that go in and begin to show the ways in which design can still take conversation and debate and the way in which the designers role is less to be a problem solver but more than a way to be a kind of court jester to the engineers to the scientists to be that kind of character who says here's how we communicate your ideas and your inventions in ways that will spark public interest that interest maybe for good or for bad. But the way in which the designers role is really changing and what we're doing by being designers is not solving problems but in fact in some ways asking incredibly stupid questions. This is changing so a lot of what we're seeing now is sort of speculative design is also a move away from just thinking about designers being the ONLY sorts of experts in the development of systems that allow. Everyday people people who are not experts to take part in these kinds of imaginations so it's two quick examples one is a project is one of my favorite projects talk about it's a project that's ongoing project called a people's archive of sinking in melting that's a project done by a group of designers who have asked the question what does it mean to live in a time of climate change. So they're taking a speculative a critical approach they're not saying we're here to solve climate change they're actually saying climate change is inevitable the question that we have to ask ourselves is designers what kinds of things do we want to create in the world that allow people to live in this condition and what they've created is a database that allow I mean databases actually a strong word is a tumbler site that allows people to go in. And contribute items that might that should be saved when oceans and water ways rise. And words what you see in this project is what the designers are doing is creating a scaffolding creating an infrastructure that allows a broader number of people to participate in imagining what might this future world look like and what do I want to say what do I think will change and what do I want to say and these are not being like very every day sort of personal thing here are things that I'm finding in New York here things are finding new orleans that as climate change occurs this is what we imagine that will be important to us to remember so this is the kind of thing that you're seeing as sort of shifts in what it is that we speculate about from being grand scientific inventions to in some ways being rather dreadful but nonetheless real social and cultural ecological conditions. The similar project is a project. Called alternative bugout that people know about gods are really people have their own. Sea OK Right so bug out bags or bags that are created in case you we have disasters so it's not common here perhaps it's not uncommon for example when I lived in San Francisco to have a kit that you have with you in case there was an earthquake. So this is going to. Have to the kinds of bug out bag what might be the personal things that I want to say what might be the things that a musician wants to say what might be the thing for the rock climbing with what might be the things they really want to say to her not only are they looking at the sort of binoculars speculation like the sort of binoculars imagination but also they're beginning to say how do we create to kids that allow other people to do this and not just doing it themselves but actually creating. Communication devices to allow other people to participate in this imagination to allow other people to participate in this process of speculating what would I want to take with me. In my book out that. This is the kind of work that is really shaping what we are what many people are doing in design now to imagine what these futures might be not to try to figure out how to solve the problems in many ways because actually designers are not great at solving problems engineers are great for solving problems scientists are great at making discoveries but designers are really good at is making representations making things that allow us to experience the world differently. And rather than always trying to solve the problem sometimes what we need to do is to pause or to ask questions about what the current conditions are or what the future conditions to be. And to create these kinds of products services tool kits that are radically imaginative that ask the question what if an answer in a way that's not a story it's not a T.V. show it's actually something that you can put in your hands and use Thank you. Thank. You. OK. Thank you. Thank. You. Yeah great question not sure if this is working but I hope you can hear me so one of my favorite authors of science fiction is William Gibson who wrote a book called Neuromancer and he coined the term cyberspace and one of the things that he observed around him in the early eighty's is that with the advent of computer networks and graphical user interfaces that culturally it became possible to imagine that computers and the linkages between computers B. were a space you know a space that had meaning or that a landscape in which there could be action right the characters the hackers in this book they call themselves console cowboys and it's like a front here has opened up inside of this network of computers that is now an area where people are competing or you know that's being domesticated almost but. Many I've read articles where many software coders who are alive during that time said that they read Gibson and they kind of knew where he was going in that they were actually influenced by his vision of cyberspace and they looked at it is their job to kind of try to concretize or usher in some of the things he was imagining but. That's what it made me think of but I would say that we have to be careful when we say that we're actually trying to predict the future or that we look at science fiction is presenting this body of images or trajectories that we want to actualize in the world of that we want to pursue through science and technological development I think oftentimes what science fiction can do is it can magnify certain things that are already percolating in our current moment like Gibson did with cyber space and it can help us have these kinds of conversations about whether or not we agree with it or that we can attribute meaning and value to it can test it raise awareness about it so I think it's difficile Aetate a conversation about the human value that we attribute to these developments is just as important as providing almost like a prototype for others to then build this up so it makes sense. Great question. Me. Maybe I'll just go first real quick since I have the mike and I won't put anyone on the spot standing next to me one of the things I didn't mention when I was talking about rich. FINEMAN nanotechnology is that out many of you are probably familiar with who knows what the Gray Goose in Ario is who's heard of that out in the context of OK so it's this idea that will develop some kind of nanotech and will develop these small nano scopic machines and they'll start replicating and they'll convert all of the matter the chairs are sitting in your clothes into copies of themselves and then eventually they'll convert the earth into just a bunch of self replicating nanobots and all everything organic will be dead it's kind of the plot of if you've seen the movie transcendence with Johnny Depp that's a film that's kind of about that. And this was widely criticized. Because there are a lot of scientific problems with the very idea of machines that small and like how would they have the energy to do that and matter behaves differently at that scale but one of the biggest popularizers of this was the engineer Eric Drexler he was kind of the. Showman of the nanotech one of the people who was really instrumental in its popularize ation in the eighty's and he was criticized by many of his colleagues I believe Richard smally was one of them so I guess I point to that as an example that not to say that maybe Drexler was an ethical and maybe popularizing the technology or engaging in you know sensational kinds of speculation but I think that the ethical dimension in terms of we have to have scientific and technological literacy we have to have people who are able to communicate us about communicate with us about what technologies do like for instance nuclear power I'm teaching a class and risk communication right now we've talked about you know we have to know how safe it is to live next to a nuclear power plant we need to have access to science in order to make decisions about what we're going to live with and the risks were. Take for me that would be. You know one of the things that I that I think is really important just are alongside technical communicators being very careful and and considerate about the ethical implications of the technology as it develops that the meek makes it in things explicit to users so the example that the judge just referred to what does it mean to live next to radio active material but what about those things that aren't as explicit So for example a Clifford Nass who was at Stanford University for years has been studying how we interact with technology and very specifically hollow we what kinds of assumptions we meek and the kinds of expectations we have when we indulge technology with human characteristics so that we interact with the computer in a very different we are when we consider there is an element of speech all of a sudden as users we expect a certain level of intelligence as in level of responsibility I routes he only say thank you to parking meters if the TELL ME HAVE A NICE the and so all of a sudden there is this. There's this interaction that I have and I think it raises a number of ethical questions about the expectations that we have as users and as individuals and as we go about in the world interacting with technology and not always understanding how that is going to change over time but I but I think certainly the responsibility of technical communicators is to be investigating those kinds of issues with regards to ethics. So I think. I think that when we are working as engineers are clear. Your scientists or designers we're actually if we're engaged in making things that have ethical consequences and and and when we are predicting or postulating futures one of the tasks that we can be asked to do is to explore those futures that we might not want to pursue as well right and to surface those and that becomes a task that we can take on at the same time as as as scholars of this I mean as as people doing media theory. We also have to rethink some of these questions about ethics and and so the discussion about the Microsoft bought is a really great discussion to have about where's that where's the ethical challenge there is the bought end up just displaying racist behavior without a doubt. Where did the bought develop that racist behavior from. You know what are the limits of you know where the limits of openness and things like that I think those are questions that we're going to have to wrestle with and that's really the bots really interesting to me because it becomes a way to instantiate something that many of us have said for a long time like you know the openness of the Internet is not necessarily a good thing right. And somehow What's curious is that no one wants to hear that when you are a human saying that because you just sound like a curmudgeon but all you have to do is release a bot that clearly shows like this is what happens we put something on the world and like then we collectively decide to train it to be racist a massage honest and this is why we can't have nice things I mean like that's that's part of the usefulness of these sorts of artifacts is they make concrete what otherwise are abstract ethical concerns. Yeah I think so I would say that. This is why. We're so. Afraid. To look at. Your. Cap. And it looks like. Someone. I think. Created. This. Fact. You are. More. So I do I do a lot of work in usability studies usability design I think. Use a sense of design sorry and I think that's one of one of the year is that has become really important in tombs of understanding not what use the see that they want. What they would expect but actually having an opportunity to see how users actually interact with technology so I think certainly the rule of the non the non technical expertise is the not the non-technical exploiter that in this case are going to see the end user is to be able to provide on the ground are realistic interactions and expectations of of technology and technology interactions. In the thirty four or three course I'm teaching we talk a lot about the role of social media how that's transform technical communication understood in a certain census. Relocation relating to technologies perhaps something mundane like consumer technologies. There's no shortage of to Torrijos or product reviews or videos on You Tube or people are engaging with various technical artifacts and showing how to modify them how to turn them into something defriended valuating how useful are durable they are so I think that social media things like blogs you to just the ability for people to become authors of content various mediums has allowed for people to participate in technical communication in a radically kind of different way and yeah that's my answer. I think that I think. We're. Helping. Me. Read. That. You know. How. This is. You know. Well. What. Was previously. No. What are. We. So I'll. Be nice to you is your story and so you know genius so I'm happy to leave our conversation with this. Great conversation it's been. A. Two and.