DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

 

 

  • Readings and video viewings given in this calendar are to be read or viewed before the class in which they are discussed.  It’s assumed that you will read the entire text  or watch the entire film or video unless otherwise stated, with the exception of the first week.

  • Email me if your attempts to get assignments from the blog are unsuccessful, or if you have questions about the assignments.  My office on the West Campus is Humanities 2104.  Feel free to visit me if you are in the locale. Office hours are available on Blackboard. 

Class locations: ONLINE for Spring 2014.

 

The general plan:

Discussion responsibilities:  I’m going to ask you all to pitch in a bit with the discussion leadership by being responsible for leading discussion on three of the texts  (summary, asking some interesting questions, perhaps finding a bit of background info).  This document is a sign-up sheet. Please pick three and sign your name under the text title and week. Discussion leaders will post a summary (approximately two pages, and this may coincide with your blog post if you wish, ie, no need to do a separate blog post from the summary) of the text during the week of discussion and 4-5 questions on important or interesting points related to the text.  Please post these soon after the discussion board forum is open to the rest of the class at the start of the week.

 

After some consideration, I decided to choose focal chapters for most of the book-length readings, but that does not mean reading the entire book is preferable.

 


Week 1: Introduction to the course: The Digital Stakeholders and the Virtual Revolution (Jan. 27-Feb. 2)

 

  • BBC video documentary:  The Virtual Revolution (excerpts available on Blackboard under Assignments and at the bottom of this page))–If you have not seen these, they are definitely worth viewing.  This series will do a good job of introducing you to the virtual stakeholders, the major personalities and forces involved in the Internet revolution.  This does not mean that the series is unbiased or particularly balanced in its approach to the topic.  The concerns given here about the complicity of users in disclosing private information, though, seems more relevant with each passing day.  Each episode is an hour, so take your time and feel free to focus on the parts that interest you the most.

  • Barlow, John Perry.  “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.”   1996.  Web.

    Mr. Barlow was a founding member of the Grateful Dead as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a staunch individualist who became active in the Libertarian Party. This document has gained widespread attention after Barlow sent it as a email to his friends and followers in 1996.  In both its original email form and a trimmed-down version, it persists as one of the oldest intact documents on the Internet.  Although Barlow wrote it in response to specific acts by then-President Clinton and his VP Al Gore (the passing of the Communications Decency Act of 1996), its significance has expanded over the years as a manifesto for Internet freedom. Original version with email intro here.

  • Gates, Bill.  “Everyone, Anytime, Anywhere The next step for technology is universal access.  Oct. 1999. Web.

    This is another persistent old document on the Internet, this one on the Microsoft website.  It’s noteworthy because it was assumed to be written by Bill Gates, and because it accurately predicted the current trend toward universal access and interconnectness of electronic devices that at the time seemed fantastic. It’s also remarkable for its state of presentation, which has never been corrected or improved over the last decade. Along with Barlow’s Declaration, it provides a snapshot of major forces contesting for control of cyberspace:  the individual will versus corporate and bureaucratic forces.  (We can’t forget economic forces, of course, presiding over both.)

  • Web History:  A Timeline.  Web.

    Exactly what it says–a visual infographic.  You will find these across the web, and none of the choose the same events across the board.  This one is nice because of how far back it goes. The ones that focus primarily on the last ten years tend to focus more on social networks (or what Paul Levinson calls “new new media”) to the detriment of the earlier developments in information theory, cybernetics, and hardware.  All are important.

  • Computer History Museum:  Internet History.  Web.
    This one ends in 1992, so it really is a museum, but informative for the 30 years it covers.
  • The History of Social Networking (Gordon Goble). Web.

    A snapshot. For a in-depth discussion of the short and intense history of web-based social networks, check out Fordham University communications professor Paul Levinson’s New New Media.  There are, of course, several books about Facebook (see the recommended reading page) and even a major motion picture with at least some historical relevance (if you haven’t seen David Fincher’s and Aaron Sorkin’s–producer and scriptwriter respectively–The Social Network, that’s extra homework for you, and it’s entertaining in any case; bring popcorn). Henceforth, this course will focus far more on “new new media” than the foundations of that media.

Videos:  The Virtual Revolution (BBC miniseries available via YouTube, see below)

Blog post 1 Due:  Jan. 30  (11:59 pm).

 

Week 2:  Remediations and Multiliteracies (Feb. 3-Feb. 9)

 

  • Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin.  Remediation:  Understanding New Media.  Introduction, chapters 1 (Immediacy, Hypermediacy, and Remediation), 2 (Mediation and Remediation), and 3 (Networks of Remediation). Print.
    First published in 1999, some examples in the book may seem a bit dated, but this is primarily a theoretical work that continues to gain relevanc

  • Selber, Stuart.  Multiliteracies for a Digital Age.  Chapters 1 and 4. Selber lays out a plan for teaching literacy in the computer age:  functional, critical, and rhetorical.  His claim is that much “computer literacy” has focused on the first (functional computer literacy) at the expense of critique and deliberative reflection involving computer technologies.  In Selber’s view, a multiliterate person assesses the design of programs and interfaces (what practices are encouraged or repressed by them) as well as content.  We will focus on the overview (chapter 1) and the rhetorical literacy chapter.

  • Reiss, Donna, and Art Young.  “Multimodal Composing, Appropriation, Remediation, and Reflection:  Writing, Literature, and Media.”  Multimodal Literacies and Emerging Genres.  Chapter 7. 164-182.

Blog post 2 Due:  Feb. 6 (11:59 pm)

 

Week 3:  Bodies, Interrupted  (Feb. 10-Feb. 16)

 

 

  • Hayles, N. Katherine.  How We Became Posthuman:  Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics. Chapter 2, Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers. 

    Along with Haraway’s groundbreaking essay about the reconfiguration of feminist identities in the technological era, which may already be familiar to you from cultural or gender studies, Hayles’ text is easily the most abstract and possibly challenging text in the course, describing and interrogating a revolution in the way that we view human nature and consciousness. This revolution is partly marked by a shift from grasping consciousness as presence (versus absence)  to pattern versus randomness (information versus noise). (The teleportation fantasies ofStar Trek and a host of other sci-fi ventures tries to straddle the two; The Fly is the nightmare version.)  We will focus on the above chapter, you may find other chapters useful depending on your projects.
  • “A Scandal in Belgravia.”  Sherlock.  Season 2, Episode 1. BBC, 2012.  Television/Web.  

    This is available on Amazon (Standard Definition is $4.99 to own the episode) and free with an Amazon Prime account.  Watch this to reflect on several of the concepts in chapter two of Hayles’ book (for example, the storyteller versus the professional narrator; flickering signifiers (most of the Sherlock episodes extend this concept in one way or another)). Also, the (post)modernized Irene Adler is an interesting feminist figure to consider in the “I’d rather be a cyborg than a goddess” scenario.

  • Au, Wagner James. Au, Wagner James. ”The Nine Souls of Wilde Cunningham.”  New World Notes (15 December 2004).  Web. 

    Second Life’s embedded “in-world” journalist interviewed the eight physically disabled creators of Wilde, a free-spirited avatar, and the caregiver who managed their account, about how having a shared virtual body in an immersive 3-D graphic user interface had changed their lives.  Au’s blog New World Notes continues to report regularly on Second Life community and culture. Extra challenge:  create a Second Life account and go in world.

Blog post 3 Due:  Feb. 13 (11:59 pm)


Week 4:  Online Identities and Identity Tourism (Feb. 17-Feb. 23)

  • Nakumura, Lisa.  Cybertypes:  Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet.Routledge, 2002.  Print.

    If the previous week’s texts raised the issue of virtualized bodies and the problem of gender, this book does something similar for race.  Written prior to the social networking boom of 2004+ (you may wonder at the author’s discussion in the introduction of the end of the Internet’s heyday, alluding to the dot.com bust in 2002) and long before Obama Girl existed,Cybertypes still remains an important book for its willingness to grapple with the race rhetoric, visual and verbal, of the Internet. Identity tourism is an central concept.

  • Dibbell, Julian.  “A Rape in Cyberspace.”Julian Dibbell (Dot Com).  Chapter One of Julian Dibbell’s My Tiny Life, 1998.  (First published insomewhat different form in The Village Voice, December 1993.)  Web.  

    Julian Dibbell’s first-person account of a virtual rape rampage by an avatar named “Mr. Bungle” and its aftermath on LambdaMOO, an entirely textual virtual world (still existing) at the peak of its popularity in the 1990s. TRIGGER WARNING:  This essay discusses rape scenarios and depicts graphic situations in language.

  • Donath, Judith S. “Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community.”Communities in Cyberspace.  Ed. Marc A. Smith and Peter Kollock.  London/NY: Routledge, 1999.  29-59. Available  http://www.scribd.com/doc/75994100/Identity-and-Deception-in-the-Virtual-Community-Judith-S-Donath

    This article discusses Internet deception through analysis of primarily verbal cues, borrowing from ethnography (assessment versus convention signals), and identity through voice and language. The examples are dated but of historical significance (i.e., Usenet groups). What’s particularly interesting is how one can see the evolution of certain current practices, such as Facebook’s blocking and likes, in the early practices of killfiles and agreement emails to control online sociality.

  • Film: We Are Legion:  The Story of the Hactivists. Directed by Brian Knappenberger. 2012. (YouTube)

     This feature documentary "explores early hacktivist groups like Cult of the Dead Cow and Electronic Disturbance Theater, and then moves to Anonymous’ own raucous and unruly beginnings on the website 4Chan" (film website). WARNING:  mature, potentially offensive language and situations discussed/depicted.

  • Recomended:  Film:  The Secret History of Hacking (BBC Documentary, YouTube). 

     Featuring interviews with John Draper (Captain Crunch), Steve Wozniak, and Kevin Mitnick, the documentary depicts the formation of hacker culture in the US prior to the invention of the personal computer and into the Internet age.

Blog post 4 Due Feb. 20 (11:59 pm)

 

Week 5: Multimodal Composing and Digital Storytelling (Feb. 24-Mar. 2)

 

  • Cordova, Nathaniel I. ” Invention, Ethos, and New Media in the Rhetoric Classroom.”  Multimodal Literacies and Emerging Genres.  Chapter 6. 143-163.

  • Shipka, Jody.  “Including, but Not Limited to, the Digital:  Composing Multimodal Texts.”  Multimodal Literacies and Emerging Genres.  Chapter 3. 73-89.

  •  Nelson, Mark Evan, and Glynda A. Hull.  "Self-presentation through multimedia: a Bahktinian perspective on digital storytelling." Mediatized Stories: Self-Representations in New Media, ed. Knut Lundby, 177-94. Digital Formations 52. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. 

 Week 6:  Gaming and Avatar Literacies (Mar. 3-Mar. 9)

 

  • Gee, James Paul.  What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.  2nd ed.  Palgrave MacMillan:  2007.  Chapters 2 (Semiotic Domains), 4 (Situated Meaning and Learning,” and 6 (Cultural Models: Do You Want to be the Blue Sonic or the Dark Sonic?). 

    The first two selections discuss situated learning in affinity groups as demonstrated through the playing of video games, while the third discusses how games can teach learners to assume perspectives other than the one they have been taught to accept.
  • Nardi, Bonnie.  My Life As a Night Elf Priest:  An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft.   Part 2:  Active Aesthetic Experience and Part 3:  Cultural Logics of World of Warcraft.

    Anthropologist Nardi played World of Warcraft regularly for several years while conducting an ethnographic study. Like Bissell with GTA, but in an entirely different approach, she analyzes her findings on what makes the massively multiplayer online role-playing (MMORPG) game compelling and valuable to players.  This entire book is available as a public .pdf file from the publisher.

  • Blog post 6 Due: March 6 (11:59 pm)
  • Proposals for final projects due March 6 (extended from March 4).  Peer review and self-review due by Mar. 12.  All due 11:59 pm.

Week 7:  Copyright, Remix, and the Creative Commons (Mar. 10-Mar. 16)

 

Week 8:  Wiki Culture and Wikipedia (Mar. 24-Mar. 30)

 

Week 9:  Final Project Reviews and Reflection (Mar. 31-Apr. 6)

 

The calendar may change due to unforeseen circumstances and errors being corrected.  In other words, the schedule provided here is not a contract.  I will do my best to keep it accurate.

 

 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.