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

Reading — Tuesday:   Readings from James Gleick’s The Information, Prologue-Ch.3 (Canvas)

Thursday: 

— A History of Photography, by William Jerome Harrison. [Skim chapter one (which starts on page 7 and ends on page 12) and read chapter 2 (pg.13-20).]
—  Brian Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee, 2005.  — In Canvas, week 3

—  Semiotics — a selection Joe will bring to class

—  Chinese Characters for Beginners — Joe will bring to class

 

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

Reading — Tuesday:  Winston, 19-66

Thursday:

Excerpts from James McGrath Morris’s biography of Joseph Pulitzer (See Canvas)

Richard John, Spreading the News, 1-24 (See Canvas)

This article/Video: http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/31/new-york-times-envisions-microsoft-surface-kitchen-table-just-d/

This article on Pulitzer by Jack Shafer at Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2126420

This post, “But is it journalism?” by Jeff Jarvis at his blog: http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/09/03/but-is-it-journalism-damnit/

Part III—Broadcasting 

Week 5 — Week of September 26

— Topics: History of Film, Radio, TV

Reading — Tuesday:

• Chapter 3 in Downey’s Technology and Communication in American History.
• Winston’s book: 67-87
• Margaret Graham essay, in A Nation Transformed by Information, pages 137-169 (to be posted on Canvas)
• Fang, A History of Mass Communication, pages 89-100 (posted on Canvas–check pages numbers carefully)

Thursday:

• Winston’s book: 88-99, 126-143
• Edgerton/Rollins, Television Histories, pages 1-18, 19-36, 244-260 (to be posted on Canvas)

 

Week 6 — Week of October 3

— Topics:  Advertising and Propaganda

Reading — Tuesday:  Readings from Garth Jowett & Victoria O’Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion, 5th Edition.  Posted on Canvas.

            Thursday:  William M. O’Barr, “A Brief History of Advertising in America,” Advertising and Society Review, v. 6.   http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/asr/v006/6.3unit02.html

Also see selections from from Edd Applegate, Personalities and Products: A Historical Perspective on Advertising in America, on Canvas.

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

Reading — Tuesday: Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think”; Winston, 147-242

Thursday:

• William C. Meadows, Comanche Code Talkers of World War II, preface, 100-134, On Canvas
• R. A. Ratcliff, Delusions of Intelligence, Ch. 1, 4.  On Canvas.
• Leo Beranek, “Roots of the Internet: A Personal History,” Massachusetts Historical Review, 2 (2000): 55-75, www.jstor.org/stable/25081152
• Chris Christensen, “Polish Mathematicians Finding Patterns in Enigma Messages,” Mathematics Magazine, 80, no. 4 (Oct., 2007): 247-273, www.jstor.org/stable/27643040

Week 8 — Week of October 17

— Fall Break — No class Tuesday, October 18

— Topics: Networks and the Internet

Reading — Thursday: Winston, Chapters 15-18; Rosenzweig, 179-202

Week 9 — Week of October 24

— Topics: Hackers and Hacking Culture

Reading — Tuesday: Douglas Thomas, Hacker Culture, Chapter 1 (on Canvas); TED Talk on Hacking

            Thursday: Online discussion — via Reddit discussion 

• Thomas, Hacker Culture, Ch. 2 (on Canvas)
• New Hacker Ethics
• The Economist, “Would Jesus Hack?”

 

Week 10 — Week of October 31

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

—     Reading — Tuesday: Rosenzweig, 85-91 (CD-ROMs and textbooks); Allan H. Weis, “Commercialization of the Internet,” 1992 (On Canvas)

Thursday:

• TED talk video by Jane McGonigal on gaming;
• History Channel Video about Pong;
• Chapters 1,2 and 3 from Steven Kent’s The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokémon and Beyond. Everyone can access the first three chapters at http://books.google.com/books/reader?id=PTrcTeAqeaEC&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PT7.; –
• Youth culture and gaming. Catherine Beavis, “Computer games: Youth culture, resistant readers and consuming passions,” paper presented at Research in Education: Does it Count, Australian Association for Research in Education annual conference, 1998.

Week 11 — Week of November 7

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

Reading — Tuesday:  Rosenzweig, 28-50 (Historical Knowledge online); 51-82 (Wikipedia & History); 155-178

            Thursday: Zerby, The Devil’s Details, Ch. 1,2,4,7; Grafton, The Footnote, Ch. 5-7; Bugeja & Dimitrova, Vanishing Act, Ch. 3-5  [All on Canvas]

 

Week 12 —Week of November 14

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

Reading — Tuesday: 

1)       Pop Culture treatment of the Digital Age (Hackers, Geeks, Tech)

Adam, A.E. “Hacking into Hacking: Gender and the Hacker Phenomenon.” ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society 33, no. 4 (December 2003). Found at Project MUSE:

Urbas, Gregor. “Criminalising Computer Misconduct: Legal and Philosophical Concerns.” ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society 34, no. 1 (June 2004). Found at Project MUSE

2)       Coding/Programming

Grace Hopper and the invention of the information age [electronic resource] / Kurt Beyer.  Available through UMW libraries. Read Chapter 1 and 12

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/hollerith.html

Scan over… http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/?category=sl

 

 

 

3)       Identity in the Digital age

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/10/20/chris-poole-the-anti-mark-zuckerberg-elegantly-campaigns-for-freedom-of-identity-on-the-web/

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/242698/privacy_a_concern_as_google_links_plus_with_its_other_sites.html

 

Thursday: 

1)       Pop Culture treatment of the Digital Age (Hackers, Geeks, Tech)

Brey, Philip. “Evaluating the Social and Cultural Implications of the Internet.” ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society 35, no. 3 (September 2005). Found at Project MUSE:

 

2)       Coding/Programming

Sections 1-3 http://computer.howstuffworks.com/c.htm

 

3)       Identity in the Digital age

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2119634/Google-Apps-Support-Sergey-Brins-Addiction-Real-Names-and-Identity-Provider-Accreditation

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/08/29/googles-eric-schmidt-says-plus-is-an-identity-service-not-a-social-network/

Part V – Looking forward

Week 13  — Week of November 21

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

Reading – Tuesday:  Siva Vaidhyanathan, Copyrights & Copywrongs, Ch. 1, 5 (Canvas)

— Thursday — Thanksgiving — No Class

 

Week 14  — Week of November 28

— Topics:  History of Digital History and Its Future

Reading — Tuesday: Rosenzweig, xxi-xxiv, 3-27, 92-153, 203-236

            Thursday: Winston, 337-342, Orville Vernon Burton, “American Digital History,”  Social Science Computer Review, http://ssc.sagepub.com/content/23/2/206.full.pdf+html; Johnny Ryan, A History of the Internet and the Digital Future, Ch. 10, 13 (Canvas)

Week 15  — Week of December 5

—     Varied topics

Reading — Tuesday: Group day – 4 groups read separately on topics and present to class

1)       (Re)search in age of Google — See Canvas

2)       Social Networks — See Canvas

3) Digital Divide/Information Divide- http://blog.ted.com/2006/10/10/iqbal_quadir_on/  AND http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/942/864

4) Future of Newspapers/magazines/books- http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/09/technology/tablet_ebooks_media.fortune/index.htm  AND http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.1998.tb00087.x/full