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:
Feb 13: Towards a History of Communication and Technology. Enduring Problems and Issues. Critical Perspectives. The Political Economy of the Internet: Global Village or Corporate Villa?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:
Feb 27: From Science Fiction to Romantic Realism: The Invention of CyberspaceRequired Readings:
William Gibson, Neuromancer
URLs of Interest:
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:
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:
Mar 19: Cyberspace and Political SpaceRequired 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:
Required Readings:
Oscar Gandy, "It's Discrimination, Stupid!" RVL 35-48
TBA (Online)
URLs of Interest:
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:
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:
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:
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: