| Unit | Knowledge and Technology |
| Lesson | 1 of 6 |
| Duration | 40 minutes |
| Format | Two classes together; students seated in rows; partner discussion possible; laptops available on knees |
| Knowledge framework focus | Scope |
| Central knowledge question | Does technology shape what we know, or does what we know shape technology? |
| Key TOK concepts | Evidence, Perspective, Power |
| IA prompt connections | Exhibition Prompt 23 (How important are material tools in the production or acquisition of knowledge?) |
Exhibition Prompt 33 (How is current knowledge shaped by its historical development?) |
Display on screen:
a photograph of a Sumerian cuneiform tablet (c. 4th millennium BCE)
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/327384
https://open.spotify.com/episode/41W01pz5wiGe9EEf2SNFyE
a screenshot of a ChatGPT conversation interface
Below both images, the question:
Both of these are technologies. What do they have in common?
Teacher does: Allow 20 seconds of silent looking. Then ask the question aloud and invite responses by raised hand. You are likely to hear answers about communication, storing information, recording things. Accept all of these warmly and briefly.
Then ask:
"Which of these two technologies changed what humans could know? Or did they both?"
Take 2–3 responses. Do not resolve this. Instead, say something like:
"This is the question we are going to spend the next three weeks exploring. Not just what technology is, but what it does to knowledge. And we are going to pay particular attention to whether AI — the thing on the right — is just the latest in a long line of knowledge tools, or whether it represents something genuinely new."
Teacher note: Cuneiform is the earliest known writing system, developed in Sumer over 5,000 years ago. It is the first entry in the Hodder textbook's timeline of knowledge storage (Table 3.1, p.101). Many of the earliest cuneiform tablets recorded inventories, trade transactions, and administrative data — they were, in effect, the first databases. This makes the pairing with ChatGPT particularly resonant: both are technologies for organising and communicating knowledge, separated by five millennia.
Display on screen:
Imagine a world without any technology. Not just without computers — without any technology at all.
https://unsplash.com/photos/green-trees-on-forest-during-daytime-c9peBmC_yzQ