Acknowledgements

Like many other prestigious institutions of higher education, MIT was founded by a slave owner and materially benefited from the sale of enslaved people. MIT’s third president rose to fame as the leader of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, whose task was to forcibly remove Indigenous people. The Institute also played an important role in building the military-industrial-academic complex during WWII. In 2019, the New Yorker uncovered the MIT Media Lab’s donations from Jeffrey Epstein, whose wealth has been indelibly tied to sex trafficking.

The point in acknowledging these realities is not to guilt or shame anyone, but to recognize how the many privileges we enjoy at MIT — world class research facilities, fancy speakers — are funded by efforts that involve enormous exploitation. What does this mean for the work we do here? MIT’s official motto suggests that we must acquire knowledge and apply it in a way that benefits the world: we should do so while being mindful of these histories, lest we further contribute to these problems. This class is intended to help untangle the many social complexities at the intersection of technology and society so that we can all construct a more just future.

These class policies, readings, and exercises rely heavily on resources from Blakeley H. Payne, Casey Fiesler, Justin Reich, Shannon Mattern, Jonathan Sterne, Ed Bertschinger, T.L. Taylor, Ashley Shew, Damien Patrick Williams, Lydia XZ Brown, Yoel Roth, Jeremy Weinstein, Mehran Sahami, Rob Reich, Kendra Albert, and many others. In some cases, I have shamelessly copied directly from their fantastic syllabi.

The class draws heavily on materials and examples found online, and I try my best to give credit by linking to the original source. Please contact me (crystall at mit dot edu) if you find materials where credit is missing or that you would rather have removed.

If you have read this far, congratulations! You’ve found the easter egg. The first three students to email me the phrase “I’ve found the easter egg” will each receive one bonus point for their grade.