1.16.2004
ENGL 3070: NEW MEDIA
Blegen 440, Wed 1/21/03 to 5/8/03, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM, TC WESTBANK
New media promise to transform our experience of language and reality, space and time, publicity and privacy, memory and knowledge. But what is truly new about new media? The premise of this course is that competence in the virtual realm builds on our knowledge about fiction and art as well as media history and theory. At the same time, we need to immerse ourselves in the web and its precursors online (remember MUDs?), in email and blogging, GPS and surveillance, data mining and security, as well as in the dynamic of gadgets like cellphones and PDAs. This introduction to digital culture examines a variety of old and new media to investigate the ways in which information technologies are challenging and changing inherited ideas about thinking and acting in relation to others. Authors include Walter Benjamin, Marshall McLuhan, Geert Lovink, Julian Dibbell, Lev Manovich, Neal Stephenson, and William Gibson. No special expertise with computers or other gadgets is a prerequisite, but seminar work involving one or several of them will be assigned.
Class time: 30% lecture, 50% discussion, 20% other
Work load: 50 pages of reading per week, 20 pages of writing per semester
Blegen 440, Wed 1/21/03 to 5/8/03, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM, TC WESTBANK
New media promise to transform our experience of language and reality, space and time, publicity and privacy, memory and knowledge. But what is truly new about new media? The premise of this course is that competence in the virtual realm builds on our knowledge about fiction and art as well as media history and theory. At the same time, we need to immerse ourselves in the web and its precursors online (remember MUDs?), in email and blogging, GPS and surveillance, data mining and security, as well as in the dynamic of gadgets like cellphones and PDAs. This introduction to digital culture examines a variety of old and new media to investigate the ways in which information technologies are challenging and changing inherited ideas about thinking and acting in relation to others. Authors include Walter Benjamin, Marshall McLuhan, Geert Lovink, Julian Dibbell, Lev Manovich, Neal Stephenson, and William Gibson. No special expertise with computers or other gadgets is a prerequisite, but seminar work involving one or several of them will be assigned.
Class time: 30% lecture, 50% discussion, 20% other
Work load: 50 pages of reading per week, 20 pages of writing per semester
