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Instructor: Matteo MacDermant, ABD

Teaching Assistant: James Hughes, PhD

Dates: June 20 to August 20 (Times TBD)

Format: Weekly 90–120 minute seminar + 60 minute cohort studio

Course Description

Technologies do not emerge in a vacuum. They are shaped by political values, economic interests, cultural imaginaries, labor relations, and design choices—and in turn, they shape society at every level. This course introduces technoprogressivism as a framework for understanding and actively shaping technological change in democratic, inclusive, and future-oriented ways.

Rather than treating technology as neutral or inevitable, the course emphasizes praxis, feedback loops, and collective agency. We function as an organizing tool: a space to develop collective capacity and expand technoprogressivism across domains of social life to address pressing challenges like authoritarianism and crises in housing, healthcare, and governance.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Explain the technoprogressive framework and how it differs from techno-optimism, techno-pessimism, and technological determinism.
• Analyze technologies as sociotechnical systems shaped by politics, culture, labor, and design.
• Identify power dynamics embedded in technological infrastructures and work toward transforming them.
• Develop a practical vocabulary and “shared grammar” for participating in public debates and coordinated action.
• Imagine and articulate alternative futures grounded in democratic values and universal abundance.

Expectations & Core Lenses

The course is interactive and cohort-based. Participants are grouped into stable teams that function as discussion groups, peer circles, and project teams. We examine technology through five interrelated lenses:

1. Technopolitics: Power, governance, and institutions.
2. Technophilosophy: Ontology, epistemology, and ethics.
3. Technoculture: Narratives, media, and everyday practices.
4. Sociotechnics: The co-production of technology and social systems.
5. Labor & Design: How technology is built, by whom, and under what conditions.

Week-by-Week Schedule

Week 1: Why Technoprogressivism Now?

• Focus: The 2026 conjuncture and the need for intervention.
• Core Reading: The Technoprogressive Declaration.
• Suggested Additional Readings: Citizen Cyborg (James Hughes); Transforming Technology (Andrew Feenberg).
• Artifact: A current techno-political controversy.
• Studio Deliverable: Cohort charter + “Why Technoprog Now” statement.

Week 2: What is Technology? Sociotechnical Systems

• Focus: Demystifying technology as “crystallized labor” and social process.
• Core Reading: Selections from The Philosophy of Living Experience (Alexandr Bogdanov).
• Suggested Additional Readings: Capital (Marx – Excerpts on Machinery)
• Artifact: “How it’s made” style mini-doc or teardown video.
• Studio Deliverable: Sociotechnical profile of a specific technology.

Week 3: Design Justice & Politicizing the Build

• Focus: How justice traditions change what we build and how we build it.
• Core Reading: Selections from Design Justice (Sasha Costanza-Chock).
• Suggested Additional Readings: Data Feminism (D’Ignazio & Klein); Race After Technology (Ruha Benjamin).
• Artifact: A dataset or “AI harms” case from mainstream journalism.
• Studio Deliverable: Justice redesign brief.

Week 4: Tech Workers & Movement Ecology

• Focus: Contesting technology from inside institutions; workplace power.
• Core Reading: The Making of a Tech Worker Movement by Ben Tarnoff
• Suggested Additional Readings: Abolish Silicon Valley (Wendy Liu); Rodrigo Nunes on movement ecology.
• Artifact: A worker testimony clip or organizing story.
• Studio Deliverable: Power map + theory of change.

Week 5: Political Economy: Monopolies & Enshittification

• Focus: The business models of contemporary tech: venture capital and platform power.
• Core Reading: Enshittification (Cory Doctorow).
• Suggested Additional Readings: Chokepoint Capitalism (Doctorow & Giblin); Platform Capitalism (Srnicek).
• Artifact: A platform’s product changes (ads, lock-in, API closures).
• Studio Deliverable: Political economy diagnosis.

Week 6: What Is Progress? Left Futurism

• Focus: Defending progress without reproducing domination; Enlightenment vs. Reactionary Modernism.
• Core Reading: Inventing The Future (Srnicek & Williams).
• Suggested Additional Readings: Russian Cosmism (Boris Groys); The Cybernetic Brain (Pickering).
• Artifact: Dystopia vs. “critical hope” film clips.
• Studio Deliverable: “Progress criteria” (values + indicators).

Week 7: Security Stack: War, Policing, & Borders

• Focus: Technology entangled with state violence and carceral regimes.
• Core Reading: Selections from The Palestine Laboratory (Antony Loewenstein).
• Suggested Additional Readings: Resisting Borders and Technologies of Violence (Ruha Benjamin).
• Artifact: Investigative piece on surveillance tech in public life.
• Studio Deliverable: Safeguards & governance specification.

Week 8: Reclaiming Futurity: Transhumanism

• Focus: Reclaiming the future from libertarian techno-utopianism.
• Core Reading: Selections from The Transhumanist Reader.
• Suggested Additional Readings: From Transgender to Transhuman (Martine Rothblatt); The Transhumanist Bill of Rights 3.0.
• Artifact: A “future of humanity” narrative treated as ideology.
• Studio Deliverable: “Futures stance” (commitments + refusals).

Week 9: Public vs. Private: Rebuilding the Internet

• Focus: Digital infrastructure as a public good; the commons and interoperability.
• Core Reading: Internet For The People (Ben Tarnoff).
• Suggested Reading: Platform Socialism (James Muldoon); Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto.
• Artifact: Participants join a federated service (e.g., Fediverse).
• Studio Deliverable: Public Internet Plan for a city or region.

Week 10: Worldbuilding Studio: From Framework to Movement

• Focus: Sustaining communities of practice and coalition pathways.
• Core Reading: Selections from Envisioning Real Utopias (Erik Olin Wright).
• Suggested Additional Readings: Liberal Socialism and Cosmopolitan Socialism (Matt McManus).
• Artifact: Participant showcase of projects as “world fragments”.
• Capstone Deliverable: Cohort “Worldbuilding Intervention” and a 90-day continuation plan.