History of New Media: Robots and Virtual Assistants
Course Description:
This course will engage and explore robotic and virtual servants and assistants in film, television, and commercial advertisements from the 20th and 21st centuries. Students will watch, analyze, and discuss media from a range of decades and genres, examining these AI and robotic assistants as new media and considering their intersection with race, gender, sexuality, and class. How have media representations of these assistants changed, and not changed, over time? To what extent do these depictions vary across genre and medium? How do fictional assistants compare to their real-world counterparts, such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa? How and why are fictional and real-world virtual/robotic assistants raced, gendered, and classed, and what are the implications of these markings? And what purpose—beyond simply service or assistance—do these aides ultimately serve for global consumers?