Fall 2021 Distinguished Lecturer - Dr. Jennifer Slack

I began graduate study in communication and cultural studies just when the idea that computers, particularly personal computers and the internet, were going to “save the world.” The computer as “panacea” fascinated me. As I studied with physicists, historians, political economists, and cultural theorists, I sensed (correctly) that the future was likely to be far more complicated. I also realized that the pervasive story of the prophesized future was a crucial part of a larger cultural assemblage that brought about the acceptance of change, even when that change was sometimes disruptive. An almost constitutional passion to explore these complexities and interconnections, coupled with that historical moment in the history of technology, set me on a path to understand the power of culture and communication, how change happens, the role of culture in how and why technology develops the way it does, and how and why that matters.

I have been very fortunate to teach the material I research. The students in my courses in cultural studies, technology and culture, and culture and communication are living through the changes that I study. I learn a lot from my students about how new generations negotiate cultural change, especially in the dynamic relationship between culture and technology, at the same time that I help them situate their experiences in a broader historical, theoretical, and practical perspective. My goal in teaching has always been to provide students with better tools—some of which I have developed in my research—to act deliberately, in hopes they will use their expanded knowledge to make the world a better place for all of us. 

Having lived through the introduction of the personal computer, the mobile phone, social media, and the proliferation of artificial intelligence and algorithmic decision-making, the challenges to understanding have been legion. Researchers such as myself have been called on not only to learn new technologies but to research dramatic changes in cultural practices: forms of communication (including fake news), digital art, patterns of employment, the automation of war, the understanding and practices of privacy, the algorithmic regulation of everyday life, the growing mistrust of expertise, virtual education, and on and on. There isn’t much in the nexus of culture, science, and technology that doesn’t warrant serious research.  

I want to highlight two challenges actually. First, because change is happening so fast with so much at stake, there is an enormous demand for research that far exceeds the number of people doing the work. With climate change bearing down on us, with fake news and fake science threatening informed decision-making, with heightened demands for diversity, equity and inclusion, with global economic and political developments threatening peaceful cohabitation, and with, all the while, massive technological change in service of wildly divergent cultural ends, the number of educated and dedicated voices explaining the interconnectedness of “what’s happening” and offering alternatives is insufficient given the magnitude of the task. Put simply, we desperately need more people working to understand culture and change and specifically to address the interconnections among culture, science, and technology. And we need what they have to teach us to matter: to influence politics and policy.

Second, and this follows from the first, support for research on the intersections of culture, science, and technology is challenged by the persistence of the old STEM/humanities divide, or, as C.P Snow famously put it in 1959, “The Two Cultures.” It’s a divide in which STEM, relatively speaking, is culturally valued, encouraged, and financially supported and remunerated. On the other side of the divide—the humanists, the cultural theorists, the ethicists, the artists—have been pretty much been left to fend for themselves in an increasingly unbalanced culture committed to supporting and celebrating technological change as inherently good. Without appropriate transdisciplinary connections across what I call the STEM/non-STEM divide, even STEM, ironically, can be brought to its knees. The explanations for why people refuse vaccines, disbelieve climate change, or don’t seem to care about digital privacy are not found in STEM; they are found by researching culture, by interrogating the historical and changing relationships among culture, science, and technology. The challenge, simply put, is to elevate, include, and collaborate with the work of the humanists, social scientists, and cultural theorists for whom the future is recognized as happening—co-equally—in the interconnections among culture, science, and technology. 

For transdisciplinary research to stay relevant, to effectively cross the STEM/non-STEM divide, the university environment has to value that work. For a university to remain relevant, it is important to promote collaboration and treat the cultural and technological as co-equal partners. For that reason, working at a university with strong departments in STEM and in the humanities, communication, and cultural studies is crucial. I wouldn’t want to work in an environment that ignores the wonders and work of science and technology any more than I would want to work in an environment that ignores the wonders and work of the cultural. My colleagues at Michigan Tech, the students at Michigan Tech, and the environment at Michigan Tech constantly challenge me to stay relevant, to work outside my comfort zone, to search for new ways of collaborating as co-equals. In the past few years, I have been greatly encouraged by Michigan Tech’s commitment to Tech Forward, in that these initiatives are intended to support collaboration and inclusivity across the technical and the cultural as we find new ways forward in the 21st century. 

In my role as the founding Director of the Institute for Policy, Ethics, and Culture, which emerged as part of the Tech Forward process, I have been encouraging STEM/non-STEM collaborations, the development of transdisciplinary work at Michigan Tech, and a proposal for a transdisciplinary Ph.D. in Policy, Ethics, and Culture. As part of these projects, my current research explores theories/models and applications of articulation, assemblage, systems, transdisciplinarity, convergence, and expertise. I also continue to explore, more specifically, algorithmic culture as part of the computational organization of everyday life. My spring graduate seminar in cultural studies newly foregrounds “culture, creativity, and change.” In this seminar I will bring many strands of my research together in service of transdisciplinary research and training. I want to continue to ask, how can we, as members of the university community, best promote the kinds of creative technocultural change the world currently demands?