Overview
Essay Question for 2025
How have everyday technologies transformed expertise in specific periods of the lifecourse? Your essay should focus on an example of expertise from one period of the lifecourse, and should critically reflect on historical and generational changes within this period of the lifecourse.
Learning outcomes
1. Demonstrate understanding of key theoretical concepts useful for making sense of how digital technologies penetrate and contribute to the remaking of everyday practices.
Recognise and illustrate the uneven ways in which change and continuity are lived between generations at any one historical moment, showing the interaction between technological change, expertise and everyday cultures.
3. Apply these ideas to key moments in the life course and to areas of human activity and sociotechnical support.
4. Demonstrate confidence and competence in working with a range of digital methods and media.
This module examines new thinking about how digital technologies have become part of people's everyday lives in ways that both create and solve everyday problems. The module is interdisciplinary in scope and draws on cutting edge research from across digital sociology and the digital humanities. In the first part of the module you will be introduced to key concepts for understanding social and technical change, digital culture and the history of technology in the everyday. In the second part of the module we will examine how digital technologies have shaped different stages of the lifecourse from reproduction and childhood, to adulthood and elderly care. The module will also reflect on areas where technology has significantly re-configured and disrupted everyday experiences of work, education, relationships and politics.
We will update Canvas with further reading material and information as it becomes available, as well as PowerPoint slides, discussion questions and activities. You are expected to check the site regularly and to do the preparatory tasks and reading for each session.
By the end of the module you should be able to:
1. Demonstrate understanding of key theoretical concepts useful for making sense of how digital technologies penetrate and contribute to the remaking of everyday practices.
2. Recognise and illustrate the uneven ways in which change and continuity are lived between generations at any one historical moment, showing the interaction between technological change, expertise and everyday cultures.
3. Apply these ideas to key moments in the life course and to areas of human activity and sociotechnical support.
4. Demonstrate confidence and competence in working with a range of digital methods and media.