Optional theme
Knowledge and technology
How technologies store, filter, generate and distribute knowledge, and what changes when the tool that finds an answer also decides which answers you were shown.
IA prompts that fit this theme
The wording is the guide’s, exactly. A student who changes a word of it loses marks, so quote it as it stands.
- IA prompt 06How does the way that we organize or classify knowledge affect what we know?Search ranking, tagging and recommendation are classification systems that decide what a knower ever sees.
- IA prompt 10What challenges are raised by the dissemination and/or communication of knowledge?Dissemination is now largely algorithmic, so the challenges are properties of platforms rather than of speakers.
- IA prompt 22What role do experts play in influencing our consumption or acquisition of knowledge?Recommender systems and generative tools now occupy some of the role expertise used to hold, without the accountability.
- IA prompt 23How important are material tools in the production or acquisition of knowledge?The most direct fit: the prompt is about material tools, and technology is where their influence is easiest to trace.
- IA prompt 29Who owns knowledge?Training data, model weights and scraped archives have made ownership of knowledge a live technical dispute.
A school selects two of the five optional themes alongside the core theme. All six themes.