"Printing Fictions"

Curatorial note from Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Information is not just about contextualizing data. The machines we use to generate, manage, understand, and share our views of the world are also part of how we think critically about the information landscape. This assignment for graduate and undergraduate students is of note because it asks students to consider how information infrastructure errors may be inspirational and spur innovative design. Using Philip K. Dick’s “Pay for the Printer” story of 3-D-printed things as a motivational premise for considering the advantages of machine error, the assignment “Printing Fictions” gives students the opportunity to design their own versions of the deformed artifacts, tools, and objects described in Dick’s postapocalyptic world. Through this assignment, students are introduced to a critical perspective on the value of noticing and interrogating a technology’s breakdown or the moments in which the processes or algorithms of an information system such as a 3-D printer become apparent to the user; more important, they are empowered to use these moments to enact previously unimagined uses for which the machine was not originally intended