While teaching STS, I was recently talking to my students about what constitutes an “internet attack.” The students arrived with clear examples in mind (and in hand, which was part of the assignment). The answers were primarily in the form of human-based hacking projects, and, as most of you know, they are abound. Giving the timing of the assignment, most of the cases had something to do with hacks against the US, hacks against power production facilities, and financial institutions.
However, one student brought this: Sharks, replete with jokes about Sharknado as evidence of the prowess of the shark. Seeing as how a previous lesson was about ANT, with an emphasis on non-human agents as not-to-be-ignored agents in understanding social order, broadly speaking, this was a sign that at least one student “really got it.”
Another student brought in this: an eagle hitting a drone, hard.
Not a few days pass, and the blog’s oldest friend, dmf, sends me to a great website, half-serious, half-satire, CyberSquirrel1. The site is a terrific description of how our critical infrastructure is seemingly the most danger from other nation-states; however, the empirical materials do not seem to suss-out such an explanation; in fact, squirrels and other non-humans are responsible for more “attacks” than anyone else.
Makes for a great lesson if you want to find a fresh new way to bring infrastructure and the agentic role of nonhumans into the classroom in a way that is, to my mind, far better to the early discussions that Latour made about stop signs or door hinges.
Installing (Social) Order 
you are so right on that, in fact, ABET (the credentialing service for engineering degrees) has special language now about the importance of teaching students the value of expertise, the role of expertise, and so on (beyond the old way we used to do this, which was a historical primer on Technocracy and Scientific Management). Oh the times, they are a changin’!
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excellent, so vital to our attempts at democracy in high-tech times:
http://faculty.cas.usf.edu/sturner5/Papers/ExpertsPapers/paper.htm
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yes, we are talking about expertise, trust/credibility, etc. all the time.
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one of the defining phrases of modern life; experts say ______
do you teach on “expertise”?
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The connected link has some pretty remarkable quotes from experts: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/earshot/the-trouble-with-dark-tourism/6412726
On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 10:41 AM, Installing (Social) Order wrote:
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the kids might like:
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/earshot/dark-tourism/6908084
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It opened precisely that discussion in class! Ha!!
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it was only a matter of time before they started their guerrilla resistances to our war on the biosphere….
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_ROQZLIwFUl8i3BmUvQZ3g/videos
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