An interview with Dr. Dawn Armfield of Minnesota State, Mankato about how accessibility intersects with artificial intelligence. She shares about AI in teaching, visual AI, inclusivity, ethics, classroom technology, and her current research on virtual reality for young adults with cognitive disabilities. Find Dawn at her faculty bio or her Instagram @dawn_armfield.
This is part 2 of 2 about the book IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black. In Part 1, we described how IBM, through its German subsidiary Dehomag, supported the mass extermination of the Jewish people. How do we know IBM’s involvement made a difference in the scope of the mass murders? One clue comes from comparing how things went down in the Netherlands vs. France. We also talk about surveillance, ethical hacking, why the logical fallacy “argumentum / reductio ad Hitlerum” shouldn’t be a thing, and what the story of IBM and the Holocaust has to do with UX design.
Sources and further reading
Black, E. (2001). IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation. Dialog press.
Gabriel, M. (2011). Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution. Little, Brown.
Katz, S. B. (1992). The Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust. College English, 54(3), 255. https://doi.org/10.2307/378062
Purnell, S. (2020). A woman of no importance: The untold story of the American spy who helped win World War II. Penguin Random House.
Nazi Germany systematically identified, relocated, and murdered millions of Jewish people during the Holocaust. But how were they able to kill so many so efficiently? IBM equipment played a key role. Meanwhile, IBM CEO Thomas J. Watson got rich off of Nazi Germany and strategically escaped scrutiny for his collaboration. In this episode, drawing on Edwin Black’s book IBM and the Holocaust, Abi explains how intertwined IBM and Nazi Germany were by tracing their paths through the Hitler years.
Sources and further reading
Black, E. (2001). IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation. Dialog press.
We reflect on AI text generators, creativity, technical communication, writing instruction, algorithmic literacy, magic, and more. Importantly, we reveal the results of our Twitter experiment: Are we funnier than a robot? (Results were mixed.) Also, find out what happens when we drink an AI-generated cocktail recipe and ask ChatGPT to write a stand-up routine about the ethics of artificial intelligence.
Sources and further reading
Bakke, A. (2020). Everyday Googling: Results of an Observational Study and Applications for Teaching Algorithmic Literacy. Computers and Composition, 57, 102577. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2020.102577
Graham, S. S., & Hopkins, H. R. (2022). AI for Social Justice: New Methodological Horizons in Technical Communication. Technical Communication Quarterly, 31(1), 89–102. https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2021.1955151
This is the last of our 3-part series in which we discuss The Devil Never Sleeps: Learning to Live in an Age of Disaster, by Juliette Kayyem. In this episode, we talk about the importance of continually examining your systems, and learning from mini disasters instead of brushing them off. Finally, we put our newfound knowledge to the test when a baking attempt goes awry. Content warning: Gun violence.
This episode is part 2 of our 3-part series on disaster communication, where we are discussing the book The Devil Never Sleeps: Learning to Live in an Age of Disaster, by Juliette Kayyem. In part 1 we talked about the barriers that make comprehending and communicating about crisis challenging. In this episode, using cases such as Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon explosion, we address how to overcome those barriers and get quality info to the people who need it. The first step is listening downward, or gathering info from people who are closest to disaster.
Sources and further reading
Baniya, Sweta. 2022. “Transnational Assemblages in Disaster Response: Networked Communities, Technologies, and Coalitional Actions during Global Disasters.” Technical Communication Quarterly 1–17.
Berg, P. 2016. Deepwater Horizon. Summit Entertainment.
Frost, Erin A. 2013. “Transcultural Risk Communication on Dauphin Island: An Analysis of Ironically Located Responses to the Deepwater Horizon Disaster.” Technical Communication Quarterly 22(1):50–66. doi: 10.1080/10572252.2013.726483.
Kayyem, Juliette. 2022. The Devil Never Sleeps: Learning to Live in an Age of Disasters. PublicAffairs.
McKay, A. 2021. Don’t Look Up. Netflix.
Potts, Liza. 2013. Social Media in Disaster Response: How Experience Architects Can Build for Participation. New York: Routledge.
Sauer, Beverly. 1998. “Embodied Knowledge: The Textual Representation of Embodied Sensory Information in a Dynamic and Uncertain Material Environment.” Written Communication 15(2):131–69.
Many organizations focus on preventing disaster from happening, but don’t have plans in place for when disaster inevitably does happen. And as climate change worsens, we need to buckle up for living in an age of disaster. What does this mean for communicating about risk, crisis, and disaster? To answer this question, Benton shares insights from the book The Devil Never Sleeps by Juliette Kayyem. Benton and Abi also discuss their own very different reactions to disaster in their own lives, as well as their favorite zombie media.
Cheek, R. (2020). Zombie ent (r) ailments in risk communication: A rhetorical analysis of the CDC’s Zombie apocalypse preparedness campaign. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 50(4), 401–422.
Fleischer, R. (Director). (2009, October 2). Zombieland [Action, Comedy, Horror]. Columbia Pictures, Relativity Media, Pariah.
Forster, M. (Director). (2013, June 21). World War Z [Action, Adventure, Horror]. Paramount Pictures, Skydance Media, Hemisphere Media Capital.
Kayyem, J. (2022). The Devil Never Sleeps: Learning to Live in an Age of Disasters. PublicAffairs.
Levine, J. (Director). (2013, February 1). Warm Bodies [Comedy, Horror, Romance]. Summit Entertainment, Make Movies, Mandeville Films.
Meyer, R., & Kunreuther, H. (2017). The Ostrich Paradox: Why We Underprepare for Disasters. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Scrivner, C., Johnson, J. A., Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, J., & Clasen, M. (2021). Pandemic practice: Horror fans and morbidly curious individuals are more psychologically resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic. Personality and Individual Differences, 168, 110397.
Snyder, Z. (Director). (2021, May 21). Army of the Dead [Action, Crime, Horror]. The Stone Quarry.
Sparby, E. (2020). Syllabus: ENG 451 Technical Communication in the Zombie Apocalypse. Retrieved 24 Nov. 2022 from https://www.emsparb.com/courses.html
We spoke with Dr. Joseph Robertshaw about his show, The Podcast of Podcasts, and the potential that podcasting holds for everyday technical communicators: students, professionals, educators, and even homesteading enthusiasts.
