History of the Information Age — Fall 2011

Part I – Print (and its predecessors)

 

Week 3 — Week of September 12

— Topics:   Coffee Houses and Print Culture, Photography, and a splash of written language/printing press

• Ashley Lightburn                     § Joe Calpin                 § Caitlin Murphy

 

Part II – Early Networked Communication 

 Week 4 — Week of September 19

— Topics:  History of the Postal Service, modern journalism (newspapers/magazines), and a splash of telegraph/telephone

• Kyle Allwine               § Mike Roche              § Abbey Vinik

 

 Part III—Broadcasting 

 Week 5 — Week of September 26

— Topics: History of Film, Radio, TV

• Andrew Frisk               § Riley Baver

 

Week 6 — Week of October 3

— Topics:  Advertising and Propaganda

• Abbey Vinik                § Nicole Steck             § Claire Brooks

 

Part IV – Information in the Digital Age

Week 7 — Week of October 10

—    Topics: Early Computers, Role of war/military in creation and spread of information/computing technology (WWII, Cold War, ARPANet); Rise of Mainframe and personal computers

• Patrick Kramer            § John McNair             § Anthony Hahn

 

 Week 8 — Week of October 17

— Fall Break — No class Tuesday, October 18

— Topics: Networks and the Internet

• Ashley Lightburn                     § Anthony Hahn

 

Week 9 — Week of October 24

— Topics: Hackers and Hacking Culture

• Christine Barnes                      § Charles Girard                      § Caitlin Murphy

Week 10 — Week of October 31

—    Topics: Video Games;  Expansion/Commercialization of the web; Web 2.0+

• Christine Barnes                      §Mike Roche

Week 11 — Week of November 7

— Topics:  Trust, Citations, “truth” in the Digital Age; Wikis

• Charles Girard             § Joe Calpin

Week 12 —Week of November 14

— Topics:  Group week – 3-4 groups read separately on topics and present to class

1)      Pop Culture treatment of the Digital Age (Hackers, Geeks, Tech)
2)      Coding/Programming
3)      Identity in the Digital age
4)      Other topics???

• Andrew Frisk               § Riley Baver   § Kyle Allwine

 

Part V – Looking forward

Week 13  — Week of November 21

— Topics:  Infographics and the Rise of Visual Literacy; Copy Right/Copy Wrongs

• Claire Brooks               § Nicole Steck

 

Week 14  — Week of November 28

— Topics:  History of Digital History and Its Future

• John McNair                § Ken Rineholt

Week 15  — Week of December 5

—    Varied topics

Reading — Group day – 3-4 groups read separately on topics and present to class

1)      (Re)search in age of Google
2)      Social Networks
3)      Digital Divide/Information Divide
4)      Future of Newspapers/magazine/books    

• Patrick Kramer            § Ken Rineholt