Syllabus

Requirements: subject to negotiation

Everyone is expected to prepare the assignment prior to class and participate in class discussion.  Attendance is a sign of engagement. Any student missing more than four classes will fail.  Students are encouraged to bring electronic devices to class, although they should not use them until specifically instructed to do so. No student will be admitted to class after 12:05. 

Students will need to be flexible--assignments and requirements are subject to change.

There will be three primary modes of assessment:

40%     Projects and participation (including blogs). These will be graded on a curve.

            Students must have blogs with posts that comment on the readings. The best

            posts will be featured on the class blog. Students are also expected to comment

            on one another's blogs.

40%     Exams and papers. These will not be graded on a curve.

20%     Self-assessment. This is your final paper. In it, you give an account of what you've

            contributed to the class and what you've gotten from the class.  Bluntly put, you

            grade yourself and try to convince me that you deserve this grade.

        

Schedule:

1/20    Introduction: reality/hype

1/25    First group project due: internet timeline

1/27    “After the Dotcom Crash”

            “History of Internet and Flexible Future”

             “Market Ideology and Myths of Web 2.0” 

            “Mass psychology of Internet”

            “Recent Futures: TAZ, Wired, and the Internet”

            “Past and Future History of the Internet”

2/1      Jaron Lanier, You are not a Gadget, part 1              

2/3      Jaron Lanier, You are not a Gadget, parts 2-3

2/6      Jaron Lanier, You are not a Gadget, parts 4-5

2/8      “Powerlaws, Weblogs, and Inequality”

            “Weblogs and Emergent Democracy”

            Galloway interview

            “Bourgeois Anarchism and Authoritarian Democracies"

2/10    No class.  Blogs will be evaluated starting at 5:00 on 2/11.

            Students are expected to have posts on the readings.

            Evaluation criteria include design, comments, features, number of 

            posts, quality of posts.

2/15    Tiziana Terranova, Network Culture, chapter 1

2/17    Tiziana Terranova, Network Culture, chapter 2

2/22    Tiziana Terranova, Network Culture, chapter 3

            “Free” (Chris Anderson)                    

2/24    Tiziana Terranova, Network Culture, chapters 4-5

3/1      Jodi Dean, Blog Theory, chapters 1-2

           

3/3      Jodi Dean, Blog Theory, chapters 3-4

3/8      Midterm exam.

3/10    No class. Papers due in my office at 5:00 on 3/11. I will not accept late papers or electronic submissions.

3/12-3/20       Spring break

3/22    Marc Andrejevic, iSpy, chapters 1-2

3/24    Marc Andrejevic, iSpy, chapter 6-7

3/29    "Google's Revolution Factory" --Alliance of Youth Movements
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23283
look through and analyze this website: http://www.movements.org/. 
"Diverting the Radicalization Track"
Be sure to read the summit reports (links available at both sites).
What is this group? What does it do? How do you know? Are these good guys?
Why or why not?       

3/31    Group Projects: Free/Livre/Open Source

            “Cathedral and Bazaar”

            “Digital Maoism”

4/5      Group Projects:  Google

            “Back to Microsoft” (critique of google)

            “Society of the Query and the Googlization of Our Lives” 

            “The Googlization of Everything”

4/7      Group Projects: Facebook, Twitter,

            “The Viral Me”           

            “Twitter and Long Form Thinking”

4/12    Bifo, Precarious Rhapsody, chapters 1-3

4/14    Bifo, Precarious Rhapsody, chapter 4-8

4/19    Group Projects: Wikileaks

            “Contain This”

            “Twelve Theses on Wikileaks”

4/21    No class. Papers due in my office at 5:00 on 4/22. I will not accept late papers or electronic submissions.

4/26    Nicolas Carr, The Shallows, pp. 1-57

4/28    Nicolas Carr, The Shallows, pp. 58-143

5/3      Nicolas Carr, The Shallows, pp. 144-end

Final Exam: Saturday, May 7 at 1:30.

Blogs will be evaluated starting Monday, May 9, at 12:00 (noon).