| PTC 603, Spring
2012 Office: 413 Cullimore Hall Hours: T, 1-2; Th, 1-2, and by appointment Mail: Humanities Dep't, NJIT, Newark, NJ 07102 |
|
Greetings,
As the faculty mentor for this distance learning course, Technological and Cultural Change, I welcome you. There are a number of books assigned for this course (listed on the course syllabus below), which I hope will provide you with a fertile reading and thinking experience. Besides reading, we will also be doing a lot of writing. There will be weekly postings, some of them authored by a group and some of them by you alone, and there will be an end-of-term research paper and a final exam that will be essay in format (and, related to the research paper: an annotated bibliography, and a term paper "announcement").
We will be conducting our group discussions on the Moodle conferencing system (at moodle.njit.edu), so you will need to have a UCID account to be enrolled in this class’s "conference." To get this account, phone the NJIT Computing Help Desk at 973-596-2900 or try obtaining directions from NJIT's Information Services website: http://ist.njit.edu/. As a last resort, you may be able to get technical help by writing to moodle.admin@njit.edu. Once you have the account—or if you already have the account—please contact me through the Moodle messaging system and provide me with an e-mail address where if necessary you can be contacted other than through the Moodle environment or via your NJIT email address; in any case, I may have occasion, if for some reason Moodle were not working, to write to you at your NJIT eddress, via Highlander Pipeline, so make sure to check that eddress regularly or else to have your mail forwarded from there to an eddress you use often; in any case, my messages to you sent via Moodle will go to your NJIT email address.
After you have accomplished what is specified above, and once you have read over the materials waiting for you at the course site (the greater portion of which is not redundant relative to the message you are reading now), please then send a message to the class conference to introduce yourself, in the Discussions section of the class conference and in the subsection designated "Introducing Ourselves" (you need not introduce yourself until the first day of the semester). Throughout the duration of this course, you will need to log on to the Moodle conferencing system. You should sign into our on-line conference discussions at least once a day and respond to the comments and questions that I and/or your classmates have posed. It is STRONGLY recommended that you learn the Moodle system thoroughly right away; you may wish to begin your learning process by clicking the link under "Student Tutorials" at the Moodle website once you have logged in. And, again, please make sure to peruse all of the materials awaiting you at the course homepage, such as can be found in, for example, the course Syllabus, Calendar and Discussions.
Also, please, as soon as possible, read especially the "Introduction to the Course" to be found on the course homepage or here.
CAUTION: ALL ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS YOU INITIATE MUST BE VIRUS-FREE!!
I look forward to getting to know you, to our exchanges, and otherwise to our sharing of our reading experiences that I think you will find enriching and enlightening.
Yours cordially,
Burt Kimmelman
COURSE DESCRIPTION
The purpose of this course is primarily to establish an intellectual context within which other, often more advanced, graduate work, such as in the field of Communication, can be put into perspective. The premise of the course is that technology plays a fundamental role in the formation of thinking and generally in all arenas of human enterprise. In seminar format, and with special emphasis on the interrelationship between technology and communication, the course examines the complex ways in which technology constructs—and is constructed by—society. Discussions will focus on how technological change is expressed in literature, art, architecture, philosophy, and social movements, and how they, in turn, influence the future direction of technology. Within these contexts, the course will also consider theories of invention, literacy, ethics and esthetics.
REQUIRED TEXTS
Bolter, J. David. Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the
Remediation
of Print. 2nd Ed. Mahwah, NJ and London:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001.
Bronk, Oppen and Schwerner. Sample Poems (multiple pages).
Hayles, N. Katherine. Electronic Literature: New Horizons for
the Literary. South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008.
_____. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Ihde, Don. Bodies in Technology. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2002.
Malloy, Judy. its name was Penelope. (This text consists of four files that can be downloaded from the class Moodle site; the four files must be placed in the same folder on a computer drive and then the file with the .exe extension must be double clicked.)
Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London and New York: Routledge, 1982.
Strickland, Stephanie, The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot (http://wordcircuits.com/gallery/sandsoot/).
____. slippingglimpse (http://www.slippingglimpse.org/).
Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2011.
Electronic Literature
Directory
The
Rise of Visual Communication by Prof. Carol Johnson, NJIT
Documentation Guides (including annotated bibliography samples)
Abbreviations for Marking Papers
E-Server TC Library (for
bibliographies
of work on technical communication)
Other Recent Books of Interest:
Arseth, Espen J. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.
Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation:
Understanding
Mew Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.
_____ and Diane Gromala. Windows and Mirrors: Interaction Design, Digital Art, and the Myth of Transparency. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003.
Boyer, Christine M. Cybercities: Visual Perception in the Age of
Electronic Communication. Princeton: Princeton UP,
1996.
Greco, Diane. Cyborg: Engineering the Body Electric. Watertown, MA: Eastgate Systems, 1995.
Gross, Larry, John Stuart Katz, and Jay Ruby. Eds. Image Ethics in the Digital Age. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
Hardison, O. B. Disappearing through the Skylight: Culture and
Technology
in the Twentieth Century. New York:
Viking Penguin,1988.
Hayles, N. Katherine. Writing Machines. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2002.
Hillis, Ken. Digital Sensations: Space, Identity, and Embodiment in Virtual Reality. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. Nostalgic Angels : Rearticulating
Hypertext
Writing. Norwood, NJ : Ablex Publishing
Corporation, 1997.
Joyce, Michael. Moral Tales and Meditations: Technological
Parables
and Refractions. Afterword by Hélène Cixous.
Albany: SUNY Press, 2001. http://www.moral-tales.com.
Kurzweil, Ray. The Age of Spiritual Machines. New York:
Viking,
1999.
Lunenfeld, Peter. Ed. The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2000.
_____. Snap to Grid: A User's Guide to Digital Arts, Media, Cultures. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2000.
Mitchell, William J. City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995.
Morris, Errol. Dir. Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control. Sony Pictures, 1997. (This is a film that can be rented or borrowed from a video store or library, respectively.)
Rothenberg, David. Hand's End: Technology and the Limits of Nature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Ullman, Ellen. Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997.
Rutsky, R. L. High Techne: Art and Technology from the Machine Aesthetic to the Posthuman. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
Mitchell, Robert, and Phillip Thurtle. Eds. Data Made Flesh: Embodying Information. New York and London: Routledge, 2004.
Shaviro, Steven. Connected, or What It Means to Live in the
Network
Society. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press,
2003.
Stone, Allucquère Rosanne. The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995.
Tabbi, Joseph. Cognitive Fictions. Minneapolis and London:
University
of Minnesota Press, 2002.
Turkle, Sherry. Life on the
Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1997.
_____. The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.
_____. Simulation and Its Discontents. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009.All writing must be spell checked, and to the best of one's
ability
grammar checked. If on occasion use is made of the ideas or
words
of someone else in one's writing, then the source(s) of those ideas
and/or
words must be cited; that is, when appropriate, papers must be fully
documented
(you must cite sources--using footnotes, endnotes, or parenthetical
documentation,
which include specific page numbers keyed to particular passages in
one's
text, and complete bibliographical information). Papers not meeting
these requirements will not be credited. The expectation is
that participants in this course will adhere fully to the University
Code on Academic Integrity (see: http://www.njit.edu/academics/honorcode.php).
N.B.: Lack of participation in weekly class activities will
result
in term papers and exam being disqualified.
COURSE SCHEDULE (for assignment dates and groups membership click here)
I.: Analysis of poems by William Bronk,
George
Oppen, and Armand Schwerner
(available here -
N.B.: multiple pages).
II: Ong, Orality and Literacy
(pages 1-77).
III: Ong, Orality and Literacy (pages
78-179).
IV: Bolter, Writing Space: Computers,
Hypertext,
and the Remediation of Print (pages xi-120).
V: Bolter, Writing Space: Computers,
Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print (pages 121-214); Malloy;
Strickland
(see Required Texts,
above).
VI: Turkle,. Alone Together: Why We Expect More
from Technology and Less from Each Other. (Part I).
VII: Turkle,. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from
Technology and Less from Each Other. (Part II).
VIII: Ihde, Bodies in Technology (xi-63).
IX: Ihde, Bodies in Technology (67-138).
X: Hayles, How We Became Posthuman
(xi-xiv,
1-130, especially: xi-xiv, 1-63, 84-130).
XI: Hayles, How We Became Posthuman (131-291,
especially: 131-67, 188-251, 279-291).
XII: Hayles, Electronic Literature (ix-85).
Annotated
Bibliographies due.
XIII: Hayles, Electronic Literature (87-186).
XIV: Research
Paper Announcements due.
XV: Final Exam, Research Paper, and Personal Narrative on
Your Role as a Collaborator in the Course, Due.
Assignments by Group
Ong 1
Group 1: Introduction and
Chapter 1Course Grade:
Class participation, 30%*
ABBREVIATIONS FOR MARKING PAPERS
Key: Abbreviation - Meaning
A - Article
Sample Book Report
How-To
Guide for Student Presentations
Abbreviations
for Marking Papers