What does history teach us about the future of technology?

Technology plays a vital role in our society day-to-day, but what exactly is our role when it comes to managing our tech? How do our internal biases impact the products we create? Can technological advances actually be “neutral” as a product of human imagination? These are all questions to consider as we take a look at how human and computational infrastructures overlap.   On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Caroline Somers interviews Professor Thomas S. Mullaney to discuss the impact of technology– good and bad–on modern society and our role in responsibly using it. If every advance is linked to a social issue from our past, what might history teach us about our technological future?   BOOK: Your Computer is on Fire GUEST: Thomas S. Mullaney PRODUCER: Caroline Somers MUSIC: Silas Bohen and Coleman Hamilton PRODUCTION: Pod People - Hannah Pedersen, Danielle Roth, Shaneez Tyndall, and Michael Aquino. SHOW NOTES: Link to Thomas S. Mullaney’s work

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UnTextbooked is brought to you by teen change-makers who are looking for answers to big questions. Have you ever wondered if protests really can save lives, why assimilation required Native American kids to attend boarding schools, how Black-led organizations for mutual aid began, how the fear of communism led the United States to plan the overthrows of many leaders in Latin America, or why Brazilian cars run on sugar? Or maybe you've questioned when Asian Americans will stop being seen as "perpetual foreigners," how African heritage influences Black activism, or what resilience looks like for Iranian women?  Your textbooks probably didn't teach you how American Jews were an integral part of the Civil Rights Movement, if history’s greatest leaders were generalists or specialists, how a Black teenager and his young lawyer changed America’s criminal justice system, or if either the US or the USSR won the Cold War. Did you know some of the forgotten BIPOC women of history were spying in aid of the French Resistance, that there's more to being a leader than going down with your battleship, or that there is a long history of gender expression in Native American cultures that goes beyond the male/female binary? Listen in as we interview famous authors and historians who have the answers.  Context is the key to understanding topics like British imperialism, segregation, racism, criminal justice, identifying as non-binary and so much more. These intergenerational conversations bring the full power of history to you with the depth and vividness that most textbooks lack. Real history, to help you find answers to your big questions. UnTextbooked makes history unboring forever.