Our technology landscape shapes our choices. Sometimes a digital tool makes a process simpler or collaborative work easier, but even with these affordances there can be pitfalls and harms. A reality of the digital age is considering the tradeoffs we make to use them.
Specifically, when thinking about digital management of our multimedia, some most pressing considerations are things like:
- Platform ownership and user dependency
- Unethical use of user generated materials on platforms and in software
- Web and platform data scraping to train AI models
We have to think about digital management/archives as our personal and collective memory and how they can be affected by the digital tools we use.
What’s at stake?
**If this topic is newer or less familiar to you, check out the Understanding our technology landscape section in the resources page for sites and readings first.
Under Construction
Activity
Present some scenarios that illustrate vulnerabilities at play in methods students might use for managing their digital materials. The examples below may not apply 100% to every student, but they illustrate the level of thinking this module wants to tease out. The goal isn’t to identify every possible issue with a given digital tool or software that students might use for creating and managing their digital materials, but to initiate thinking around “what ifs. After sharing the listed scenarios, or picking one of two, see if as a group some other scenarios come to mind.
Scenarios:
- needing access to a recently deceased family member’s cloud or computer
- a cell phone or laptop is stolen
- server maintenance right before an assignment deadline
- change in terms of service for a digital tool or platform
In each scenario the goal is to dig into where in the process is the access as a consumer compromised.
Breaking down the scenario:
- What’s the situation?
- Who owns/controls the platform or tool?
- Identify some vulnerabilities.
- How does recovery become more challenging for the user?
- What personal practices could help?
Example:
Server maintenance right before an assignment deadline
- Cloud writing service is experiencing disruptions to service. Things are loading slow or not at all and you have a deadline.
Transition
Visual mapping or diagraming of the tools and platforms they use for their most important digital materials.
While thinking about what you can do on a personal level, the next section will expand on some of the ways you can be more proactive with your digital material management or archiving.
