IB Theory of Knowledge 1.2.16 Assessment Bridge: Technology in the Exhibition Notes

1.2.16 Assessment bridge: technology in the exhibition

Choose an object that connects technology to a knowledge question

1. Ask what the technology changes about the knowledge claim you want to explore. If you removed the technology from your account, would the same reasoning still apply?
2. Explain how people produce, check, preserve or use knowledge through the technology. A description of its features alone leaves those questions unanswered.
3. Merely saying that a phone stored a photograph leaves its contribution unexplained; that statement could also describe a shoebox. Investigate whether this particular object’s storage, retrieval or processing affects the knowledge claim you are examining.
4. The second filter is the prompt. An object can be squarely about technology and knowledge, and still fail to answer the one prompt you selected, which is a different fault with a different fix.
5. Check both links before committing: what the technology changes about knowledge, and how the particular object helps you explore your selected prompt.
6. Write a provisional claim beside each candidate object, then check whether the object and its context support it. Revise the claim if the evidence does not fit.

Mediated observation: a scan or photograph, and what its technology made knowable

1. Some objects exist because an instrument made something visible that an unaided eye could not detect. Explain what people could learn through the instrument and how its design affected that evidence.
2. How does technology extend and modify the capabilities of your senses? Compare what an image reveals with what its instrument or processing leaves out.
3. Choose a particular image whose context you can establish: a scan, a photograph you took on a stated day, or an aerial image of a place you can identify from the ground.
4. Explain what the instrument made available and how it selected or altered the information through its resolution, wavelength range, framing or processing.
5. Worked through: many phone cameras in low light merge several exposures into one photograph. What looks like a record of a single instant is assembled from a short sequence of them.
6. For such a photograph, distinguish evidence of a scene over several exposures from a record of one instant. Check how the camera processed your particular image before making that claim.

Stored knowledge: a saved file, and what its original context loses when retrieved without it

1. A saved file can preserve its contents while losing part of the situation in which it was made. Your commentary could examine how that missing context affects a later reader’s understanding.
2. How has technology changed collective memory and the preservation of knowledge? Use your file to compare what was kept with what a later reader would need to interpret it.
3. Objects that work here are ordinary files with something visibly missing: a photograph whose location data was stripped, a document with a timestamp and no author, a screenshot lifted out of the conversation it sat in.
4. Retrieving a file gives you what its format and its creator recorded. The surrounding conversation or circumstances may have to be recovered elsewhere.
5. A screenshot of a message can preserve its visible words while omitting earlier messages, other participants or a tone established elsewhere. A later reader may fill those gaps with assumptions.
6. The words can survive accurately while their significance becomes harder to judge. Identify which missing detail would change a reader’s interpretation of your particular file.

Algorithmic selection: a recommendation screen, and what it shaped before you evaluated anything

1. A recommendation screen is an object with a date attached: what a particular service put in front of a particular person at a particular hour.
2. Before you weigh the recommendations, the service has already selected and ranked the options you see.
3. You can describe why you chose one recommendation. The screen alone may not show how the service assembled the list, and that earlier selection limits the alternatives available to you.
4. How has technology changed the way you browse, search and filter information? Consider whether the selection process favours particular sources or viewpoints.
5. Use a screenshot of a particular recommendation screen. Explain what it shows about the information presented to that user at that time.
6. The screenshot alone does not reveal everything the service could have shown. Distinguish what you can observe from claims about excluded material that need additional evidence.

Machine output and responsibility: a generated result, and who should answer for it

1. A generated result becomes an object once it is fixed to a date and a service: an automated reply you were sent, a machine translation you relied on, a system-produced report you received.
2. Your objects must already exist; they cannot be created specifically for the exhibition. Choose a generated output that had a purpose or use before you selected it.
3. Identify that earlier use. Who received the output, what were they trying to find out, and what happened when they relied on it?
4. Examine who placed the output in front of you, who presented it as an answer and who could have corrected it before you acted.
5. Your exhibition must be your own work. Selecting a machine-produced object does not make its analysis or your commentary the machine’s task.
6. Use evidence about this particular output to examine whether someone had grounds to trust it. A general claim about whether machines can know needs a wider argument than one object can supply.

Why three technology objects can end up restating one point, and how to test for it

1. Three objects from the same theme may support the same point. Check what each contributes before writing three versions of one argument.
2. Write the claim each object supports and place the three sentences beside one another. Where do their reasons or implications differ?
3. If two objects repeat a point, first check whether their contexts support different insights. If they do not, reconsider one of the objects.
4. You might examine how something became knowable, what was lost in preserving it and who stands behind a claim. Use these as possibilities only where they help explore your selected prompt.
5. Explain why each particular object belongs in the exhibition. Different-looking objects can repeat a justification, while similar objects can contribute different insights.

One exact prompt, three objects and a maximum of 950 words

1. Choose one of the 35 IA prompts and use it exactly as given. A technology theme can help you select objects without changing the prompt’s wording.
2. Keep the full prompt even when your objects concern machines or algorithms. Explain the connection through the objects and your commentary.
3. All three objects must link to the same prompt. You and a classmate may choose the same prompt, but you must work individually and choose different objects.
4. The maximum total commentary length is 950 words. Explain enough of the technology for the reader to follow your argument, then use the remaining space for the object’s context, its link to the prompt and its contribution.
5. You do not need to divide the words into exact thirds. Give each object enough space to explain and support its contribution.
6. Basing an exhibition on a core or optional theme is strongly recommended, but not required. The theme can help you find related questions; the selected IA prompt remains the focus.