Reading Sources: RVL: Resisting the Virtual Life
QCT: The Question Concerning Technology
RDR: 454 Reader and Sourcebook

Feb 6: Medium and Message. The public sphere. The global village. Technological Determinism.

Required Readings:

McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage
Golden, et al., "Marshall McLuhan on the Medium and the Message"
Gary Wolf, "Channeling McLuhan"

URLs of Interest:

• McLuhan Quote - O - Rama
• Who was Marshall McLuhan?
• The McLuhan Probes

Required Readings:

Universal Movement Trinity, "CyberTribe Rising" RDR
Jacques Leslie, "Mail Bonding" RDR
Iain A. Boal, "A Flow of Monsters: Luddism and Virtual Technologies" RVL 3-16
Herbert I. Schiller, "The Global Information Highway: Project for an Ungovernable
World" RVL 17-34
Stanley Aronowitz, "Technology and the Future of Work" RDR
Schiller, "Media, Technology, and the Market: The Interacting Dynamic" RDR

URLs of Interest:

Feb 20: Technology, Ideology, Consciousness

Required Readings:

Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology"

URLs of Interest:

• New Modes of Information
• City of Bits

Required Readings:

William Gibson, Neuromancer

URLs of Interest:

• William Gibson Information
• Netropolitan Life
• EFF "Net Culture" Archive
• The Culture of the Internet and Usenet
• Virtual Societies: Their Prospects and Dilemmas

Required Readings:

TBA (Online material)
Howard Rheingold, "Visionaries and Convergences: The Accidental History of the Net" RDR
Gary Chapman, "Making Sense Out of Nonsense: Rescuing Reality from Virtual Reality" RDR

URLs of Interest:

• History of the Internet
• Brief History of the Internet
• Internet 25th Anniversary
• How the Internet Came to Be
• A Short History of the Internet

Required Readings:

Howard Besser, "From Internet to Information Superhighway" RVL 59-70
Doug Henwood, "Info Fetishism" RVL 163-172
Mark Stahlman, "Backlash: The Infobahn is a Big, Fat Joke" RDR
Susan Reifer, "Ma Bell's Kids Go To Hollywood" RDR

URLs of Interest:

• INFORMATICS: A SHORT PRESENTATION
• The Network Nation Revisited

Required Readings:

Howard Rheingold, "Electronic Frontiers and Online Activists," "Disinformocracy,"
and "Afterward", RDR
Keith White, "The Killer App: Wired Magazine, Voice of the Corporate Revolution" RDR
Editor, Reign of Toads, "Bring The Noise" RDR
Jesse Hirsh, "The Information Institution: Oligopoly, Monopoly, and Power" RDR

Exercise: Participate electronically in one public forum outside of the course internet resources.

URLs of Interest:

• Howard Rheingold, A Slice of Life in my Virtual Community
• Howard Rheingold on Virtual Communities
• Howard Rheingold's Virtual Worlds Resources
• The Revolution will be DIGITIZED!
• Virtual Societies: Their Prospects and Dilemmas
• Politix Page
• Charlotte's WWWeb: Government Reform
• Grand Old Page Directory of Political Sites
• Cultural Formations on the Internet

Required Readings:

Oscar Gandy, "It's Discrimination, Stupid!" RVL 35-48
TBA (Online)

URLs of Interest:

• Electronic Privacy Information Center Home Page
• Social Implications of Information Technologies
• Chris Chesher, Colonizing Virtual Reality

Apr 9: The Virtual Classroom

Required Readings

Monty Neill, "Computers, Thinking, and Schools in 'The New World Economic Order" RVL 181-194
Neil Postman, "Virtual Students, Digital Classroom," RDR

This class session will take place entirely online.

URLs of Interest:

• The World Lecture HallU.S. Department of Education
• California Department of Education
• Internet Education Resources (Gopher)
• Education Resources
• Chronicle of Higher EducationTimes Higher Education Supplement Internet Service
• Algonquin College - Educational Technology
• Department of Education
• Education Sites
• Los Angeles Metropolitan Project
• The College Choice Website Homepage
• Apple Education
• EduCom Resources Gopher

Required Readings:

William S. Burroughs, "The Invisible Generation"
McLuhan, "Notes On Burroughs"
Douglas Rushkoff, "Communicable Diseases: Infecting the Established Media"
Langdon Winner, "Three Paradoxes of the Information Age" RDR
Jesse Drew, "Media Activism and Radical Democracy" RVL 71-84

Apr 23: Cyberpunk and the Hacker Aesthetic

Required Readings:

Peter Fitting, "The Lessons of Cyberpunk" RDR
Emmanuel Goldstein, "No More Secrets" RDR
.net, "Breaking Into Heaven" RDR
Andrew Ross, "Hacking Away at the Counterculture" RDR

Exercise: TBA

URLs of Interest:

• Hacker Crackdown
• Computer underground Digest WWW Site
• The New Hacker's Dictionary
• Cypherpunks Topics
• 2600 Magazine
• The DataHaven Project - Table of Contents
• Chaos Info Pages
• The World of Hacking
• PHRACK MAGAZINE HOME PAGE
• GNN I-Media Center: Links to Mitnick

Required Readings:

Laura Miller, "Women and Children First: Gender and the Settling of the Electronic Frontier" RVL 49-58
Claudia Springer, "Sex, Memories, and Angry Women" RDR
Gerard van der Leun, "This is a Naked Lady" RDR
Susie Bright, "The Virtual Orgasm" RDR
Anne Balsamo, "Feminism for the Incurably Informed" RDR

Exercise: TBA

URLs of Interest:

• Julian Dibbell, A Rape In Cyberspace
• Shannon McRae, Coming Apart at the Seams: The Erotics of Virtual Embodiment
• In Your Face: Subversive Gender Activity on the Net
• Feminist Activist Resources on the Net
• GENDER-RELATED ELECTRONIC FORUMS
• Feminist Majority Foundation
• Cybergrrl Welcomes You!
• Women's Room
• FeMiNa - Web Search For Women and Girls
• Men's Issues Page
• Feminism and Women's Studies

Required Readings:

Pamela Samuelson, "The Copyright Grab" RDR
John Perry Barlow, "The Economy of Ideas" RDR
TBA (Online)

Exercise: Send and decode a PGP-Encrypted Message.

URLs of Interest:

• Electronic Privacy Information Center Home Page
• Bacard's Privacy Page
• The World-Wide Web Virtual Library: Cryptography, PGP, and Your Privacy
• The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto
• The Cypherpunk Manifesto
• The Center for Democracy and Technology
• NIST Computer Security Resource Clearinghouse
• Network/Computer Security Technology
• DigiCash ecash - getting ecash
• Netscape: Legal Beat
• Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams
• SAIC Security Library
• mechworld
• Remailer list
• W3 - Based Anonymous Remailer Interface
• Computer and Network Security Reference Index
• Services of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Cryptography and Computer Security