Tuesday, October 22, 2013

This week in LIS 201 (week 8)


Week 8: Big data and social surveillance

LECTURE ON TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22

READINGS TO COMPLETE BEFORE DISCUSSION

HOMEWORK TO COMPLETE BEFORE DISCUSSION

  • If it's your turn to write a 500-word article critique, you must post this to your section blog before your section meets.
  • If it's your week to give a speech, prepare and practice!  Otherwise, prepare for a possible extemporaneous speech response.
  • Post your rough draft of paper #2 to your personal wiki pages (you will want to create a separate page so that your peer reviewers can just "comment" at the bottom).

DISCUSSION MEETING

  • First five minutes: Pop quiz? Maybe!
  • Two student presentations (#11 and #12) on the readings (and two student extemporaneous responses).
  • Discuss this week's lecture and required readings.

ONLINE OVER THE WEEKEND

This week we'll explore a famous article by scientist, engineer, and wartime government administrator Vannevar Bush on hyperlinked media that many cite as an inspiration for today's World Wide Web.

  • Read Bush's 1945 article entitled "As we may think," where he describes his vision of an information infrastructure he called the "Memex."
  • Twenty years later, in 1967, Bush wrote a follow up article, "Memex revisited," which recast his ideas in light of the early computer revolution. Read this revised version and think about the differences from the 1945 version.
  • Do a Google search on "Memex" and explore a tiny fraction of the millions of hits that appear. (You don't have to explore all of them.) Be creative; for example, are there blog posts on Memex? News articles? YouTube videos? Anything posted in the last month?
  • About thirty years after this, in 1995, a symposium was held at MIT to consider Bush's Memex ideas fifty years after their original publication. (Remember, this was only a few years after the World Wide Web had appeared on the media stage.) Many of the attendees were well-known pioneers in the area of hypertext research, like Douglas Englebart (inventor of the computer mouse), Ted Nelson (author of the 1970s counterculture computer manifesto "Computer Lib!") and Tim Berners-Lee (creator of the protocols that underlie the World Wide Web itself). Read this description of their reactions to the original Vannevar Bush article.
  • Finally, go to your discussion section blog and write a new post on what you've found and what you think of the Memex idea today.
  • Reply to at least one other student's blog posting.
  • You must finish this online activity before next week's lecture.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

SPECIAL NOTE

Please note that the Friday of the ninth week of classes is generally the last date a student may drop a course.

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