WEEK 3 - TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY
- Alexandros Barbayianis
- Jul 22
- 4 min read
What really stood out to me from Roopa Vasudevan’s talk was how she encourages us to slow down and rethink our relationship with technology by engaging with it in more hands-on, creative, and imperfect ways. Her project Slow Response highlights this by taking something meant to be fast and flawless — QR codes — and making them by hand. Sometimes her codes don’t even work, which challenges how quickly we’ve come to expect technology to deliver instant, perfect results. It’s a reminder that human error, personal choices, and slowness still have value in a world obsessed with automation and efficiency.
This connects to ideas in Zeynep Tufekci’s Twitter & Teargas. Tufekci shows that technology doesn’t drive change on its own — people shape how it’s used. Her example of using Twitter during the Arab Spring to organize both small tasks and major protests shows how people can creatively adapt tools to their needs, not just follow what platforms are designed for.
Both Roopa’s work and Tufekci’s writing challenge the idea that technology is neutral or fixed. They remind us that we can question, resist, and reshape how these tools function in our lives.
I also kept thinking about Yanis Varoufakis’s Technofeudalism while reflecting on these ideas. His argument that today’s tech platforms act as landlords, extracting value from our behaviors, really connects. It’s why people today often judge others who pay for X Premium just to get a blue checkmark and boost their likes and views — it feels like buying into the landlord’s system instead of resisting it. Roopa’s and Tufekci’s work show us there are other ways to engage with technology that don’t feed these systems of control and extraction.
Below are my raw notes and the original assignment details that shaped this post.
Raw Notes:
slow tech as resistance
Roopa’s QR codes — human error vs machine precision
Roopa’s work is a small, poetic resistance to this system
failure = intentional
machine time vs human time
DIY tech = reclaiming agency
makes tech visible again
Tufekci — tech doesn’t cause action, people do
Twitter not built for activism but became it
tools shape possibilities but don’t dictate outcomes
slow = refusal, critique of efficiency
glitch, friction, failure as strategy
how much failure can machine / people handle
human + tech shape each other
The shared thread here is control, agency, and resistance
who controls technology, and how do we push back?
blue checkmarks = paying the landlord
algorithmic landlords = extractive systems disguised as connection
refusing optimization is a form of protest
human error exposes systems that punish slowness, messiness
sources: Technofeudalism - Google Books
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WEEK 2 - ARTISTRY & ALGORITHMS
Key Topics
Computational Art
Creative Expression
Agency, Automation & Prediction
Tuesday, July 15
Program Check-In + Week 2 Overview
Recap of Conversations #1 Visit
Discuss Kwastek Reading + Moon Clip
Share Homework Posts
Homework (due Thursday 07/17)
REVIEW – Visualizing Algorithms by Mike Bostock
DEEP DIVE – Groups 1 & 2
Thursday, July 17
Deep Dive Workshops - Groups 1 & 2
(Inter)Active Reading
Homework (due Tuesday 07/22)
READ – Ch.5 Technology & People (pp.115-131) from Twitter & Teargas by Zeynep Tufecki
POST – In response to Friday’s “Conversations” session with Roopa, what points or comments resonated with you most? Can you Identify any points made during Roopa’s talk that relate to what is discussed in the Twitter & Teargas chapter? More specifically, are there any aspects of the causal flow relationships between technology and society outlined by Zeynep Tufecki that connect to what Roopa shared with us? Your post should be in the range of 200-400 words. Please be prepared to discuss in class.
From Conversations NYC:
Week 2, July 18 - Roopa Vasudevan
CONVERSATIONS NEW YORK #2
Doing Tech Ourselves (Or, Why Learning to Code Might Be the Most Punk Thing You Can Do Right Now)
When: Friday, July 19, 9:30am -12:00pm ET
Where: Red Square
Description:
In a moment where automation seems to be infiltrating every aspect of life—and, if we believe the hype, threatens the very notion of what it means to be human—it can feel impossible to imagine any way out of the futures that seem to have been constructed for us. But this is far from the case; all we have to do is look to DIY, independent, and artist-led initiatives that have sprung up in response to powerful systems over the last half century. In this overview of my research and creative practice—spanning exhibition, curation, writing, publishing, and teaching—I will make the case for why there might be more room for autonomy than we think in our current media environment, and why it's still worth learning to code by hand in a time of LLMs and ChatGPT.
About the guest:
Roopa Vasudevan is a South Asian-American media artist, computer programmer, and researcher based between New York City and Western Massachusetts. Through her research and creative practice, she investigates default technical practices and protocols, and how they intersect with larger social and economic power structures. Her work has been exhibited and featured by press outlets internationally, and she has demonstrated a particular and steadfast commitment to DIY and artist-led organizations throughout her career. She has additionally been supported by NEW INC (New Museum), the Processing Foundation, Eyebeam, and the Emerson Collective Culture Council, among others. Vasudevan received a PhD in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania in 2023, and an MPS from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU in 2013. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
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