Congratulations to Charlie Bender who was recently announced as the winner of the Faculty of Social Sciences Academic Excellence Award for his undergraduate project “Five Thinkers Walk into a Bar,” an original song he wrote and performed for a media assignment in the Politics and Technology (POLI 3P93) course.
The song creatively conveys how technologies mediate the world, incorporating points from five philosophers, including Martin Heidegger, Peter-Paul Verbeek, Marshall McLuhan, Don Idhe and Tia DeNora.
As someone who loves playing the guitar, Charlie saw this project as a creative opportunity to connect the theories and ideas he explored in class to a practical, real-world object that he could personally engage with and use as a case study.
“By analyzing the guitar through the perspectives of five thinkers, I was able to explore how technology can shape our experiences, relationships, and understanding of the world, while using the guitar itself as the medium of communication,” he says.
The project was nominated by Associate Professor of Political Science Stefan Dolgert, who described the song as “subtle and smart and magnetic.”
Charlie says he chose to deliver his message through a song played on the guitar because one of the thinkers he explored, Marshall McLuhan, famously noted that “the medium is the message.”
“This inspired me to make the medium itself part of my analysis, and since my object of study was a guitar, I thought it would be a fun and creative way to explore the theory by using the guitar to communicate,” he says. “In doing so, the format of the project became an extension of the argument itself, allowing me to demonstrate rather than simply explain the relationship between technology and human experience.”
For Charlie, one of the biggest highlights of the project was the creative liberty the class was given to explore and showcase their understanding beyond traditional academic formats.
“This freedom allowed me to engage with complex theories in more interesting and personal ways, while making connections and developing ideas that may not have emerged through conventional learning styles,” he says.
