Course Description
This course aspires to subject the always-changing phenomena known as "new media"
to scrutiny that is currently uncommon in popular press and periodicals.
Readings will draw upon both visionary optimist and skeptical Luddite authors,
media activists, the Web, and news media. Attempts will be made to juxtapose new
and old media, their respective qualities, limitations, and myths. While it will
be one of the objectives of the course to moor the extravagant claims of the
techno-visionaries to more plausible, probable grounds, the course will also
introduce the use of new media, which may lead to a certain "insider's
enthusiasm" for the possibilities opening up in creative and communicative
applications of technology. Evaluation of student performance will be based on
writings and class participation. In order to receive an evaluation in this
course each student must:
Writing
35 pages. At least two of the essays must be 5 pages long, but otherwise you are
free to write either brief or longer essays. I will ask that you do at least
half of the writing before Thanksgiving break, so that I remain sane (?) for the
holidays. Submit the writings to me on paper, for credit and revision
suggestions; then submit them to the website (details to be given). Your
audience is the 30 million people connected to the World Wide, so write with them
in mind. Topics.
Readings
Bill Gates "The Road Ahead" (excerpts)
Dale Spender Nattering on the Net
Joshua Ramo "Winner Take All" (Time magazine. Sept. 16, 1996)
J. David Bolter Writing Space
Martin Spinelli "Radio
Lessons for the Internet"
Carolyn Marvin When Old Technologies Were New
Albert Borgman "Morals of Techology"
Iaian A. Boal "Luddism and Virtual Technologies" (R. the V. Life)
Jesse Drew "Media Activism and Radical Democracy" (R. the V. Life)
Hans M. Enzensberger "Constituents of a Theory of the Media"
Noam Chomsky Film: Manufacturing Consent
Terry Gilliam Film: Brazil
Walter Benjamin "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
John Berger Ways of Seeing
Penley & Ross Introduction to Technoculture
Herbert I. Schiller Information Inequalities
Lynn Spigel Introduction to Television by Raymond Williams
Jerry Mander Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
Neil Postman The Disappearance of Childhood
Alan Aycock "E-mail Murders"
Donna Haraway "A Cyborg Manifesto"