One minute, one current technology story, three questions: what is being claimed, what is actually known, and who benefits if you believe it? Technology news runs hot — every product is revolutionary, every risk is an apocalypse — and this routine is the thermostat. It also stocks the shelves for every conversation we hold, from Should It Exist to When Code Hurts.
How to run it
- One student brings the story: the headline and two sentences of summary, no more. The job rotates, so everyone takes a turn.
- The room answers the three questions in order. Keep claimed and known strictly apart — that boundary is the whole skill.
- “Who benefits?” goes last. Who is selling something, who wrote the headline, and who was not asked?
- Park anything worth a longer argument on the board for a future discussion.
One variation
Same story, two sources: read a company’s own announcement beside a news report about it, and list what each one leaves out. The gap is usually more instructive than either document.
"We do not know yet" is a finding
The strongest sentence said in this warm-up is often that the honest answer is not known — the evidence is thin, the study was small, the demo was staged. Practise saying it plainly. It is rarer in technology writing than it should be, and it is the same standard Computers and Society holds every claim to.