Exploring Digital Realities (HPSC30038)

Digitalisation is central to daily life in the twenty-first century. It extends from the domestic to the public, while also impacting our social and intimate relations. Digitalisation, connectivity, the internet – we have built our lives around these systems, such that they have become a way of ‘making’ realities, lives, and worlds. How do we begin to understand our new and emerging digital realities? How do we account for the social inequalities that digital technologies often reproduce? Exploring Digital Realities begins with historicising the internet, and journeys to speculative futures. The subject critically assesses different case studies around viral, algorithmic, and cybernetic realities. Topics may include digital lives and ‘going viral’, deep fakes and chatbots, artificial intelligence, sextech and the internet of things, and animal-human-robot connectivities.