Thinking Like a Good Ancestor: Finding meaning in the technology we build

Thinking Like a Good Ancestor: Finding Meaning in the Technology We Build, a new course taught by Cooper co-founder Alan Cooper with support from YouTube user experience researcher Renato Verdugo, offers an opportunity to consider the long-term impact, including social and ethical implications, of new designs and technologies.

About the course:

In the high-speed disruption culture incubated by Silicon Valley companies and startups, the scope of what we look at is generally the short-term reception of our developments by our users, and not the long-term shifts that will derive from them. Meanwhile, the pace of social change, driven by technical innovation, has accelerated to the point where each one of us has essentially become our own ancestor: we each become victims and beneficiaries of the inventions we create.

Through the new concept of Ancestry Thinking, this course will propose ideas to broaden our understanding of the technological ecosystem we live in. Throughout the semester, students will discuss ways to internalize what would otherwise remain as externalities or byproducts of tech developments, hearing from guest speakers from leading technology companies and organizations along the way. The course aims to enable future technology practitioners to build holistic narratives around their developments, building a concept of “thinking like a good ancestor” into design and technology development processes. View the course syllabus here.