Technology is crucial in our daily life. Where can we find technology and how is it of use to us? This short report will give an overview of the main points discussed regarding the ToK theme: Technology.
The day began with two student presentations about their ToK books, which were then followed by a short introduction about the theme of the day.
Next, the students were put together in pairs to grade and give feedback on a practice exhibition they wrote. They were to state the main point of their partner’s exhibition to individual IB prompts and then present it to the class.
Eventually, we talked about how technology makes huge amounts of data accessible and debated about how can we be sure of its quality. We have Raw Data which, if then processed, is called information. Further Knowledge is information that can be applied. Technology is a tool with many uses for us, for example, technology can store information. In early times information was mostly transferred verbally, or by scribes who were educated in the art of writing, and often had a high rank with many privileges. Then books were invented, at first often religious works. Today knowledge is mainly transmitted by schools and universities, stored in punch cards, magnetic storage, CDs, and flash drives. We have to acknowledge that not everybody has equal access to information and what kind of information we receive has an influence on how we perceive the message told.
Audience gatekeeping and the quick spread of fake news can have very fast effects. We looked at the Lisa F. 2016 scandal and discussed on how we all have to actively make our own decision about the reliance and credibility of the information. We then read and held short presentations on articles talking about bias in technology and AI (Artificial Intelligence). There was a quiz about reliable and unreliable sources that we had to take in small groups and we then got a rating. We analyzed if the RT news channel is. We ended the day with comparing AI-created pictures to ones taken by humans as well as AI-written texts to ones written by humans.
To finish off, the day was very impressive and it was interesting to see how vast such a topic for our every day is.
Karim Kinteh 5i
