Headlines from the Future exercise
Version 1.0
Black Mirror is a dystopian anthology series that explores the dark and often unsettling relationship between technology and society, depicting near-future scenarios that highlight the potential consequences of technological advancements.
This exercise asks you to do the same for social media, but invites you also to consider a potential fix for these consequences.
1. First assume that social media continue along the direction they are currently headed. In a team discussion, extrapolate these trends and imagine what future they are likely to bring (eg, the world of 2040).
2. Designate one team member to act as Reporter. Access the Google Slide deck and choose the templates either for a newspaper front page or a Black Mirror episode.
3. Duplicate your chosen slide, drag it to the bottom of the deck, and mock up a set of news headlines, including at least one that shows more positive outcomes of these trends, and at least one showing more negative outcomes.
4. To flesh out your news stories, add at least one photo from the Internet or your hard drive by dragging it onto the slide.
5. Add all of your teammates' names as reporters. See the deck for examples of what your final slides may look like.
6. As a team, choose one of the fixes proposed in the reading for Week 2 or one of your own. Imagine that this solution takes off and becomes the de facto standard worldwide. What do you imagine could go well and what could go poorly?
7. Repeat steps 1-5 for this scenario. By the end you should have added two new slides to the deck, marked with your names as reporters or creators, and moved them to the bottom of the deck.
8. The Reporter navigates to your two slides and chooses File > Download > PNG (current slide). Post both images to #future-headlines, being sure to tag every teammate with an @ symbol, eg @Mary Gonzalez @Pat Shelley @Jesse Owens.
9. Every student individually reviews all headlines in the channel, adding a 👍 reaction emoji to the most hopeful plausible future, and a 💩 reaction emoji to the most atrocious plausible future.
This exercise is inspired by Casey Fiesler's Black Mirror Writer's Room assignment.
Image by Stable Diffusion (Leonardo Lightning XL)