This week in LIS 201 (week 12)

Week 12: Sustainable information infrastructure

LECTURE TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19

• We'll consider the global environmental impact of the information society.

READINGS BEFORE DISCUSSION

• Chris Carroll, "High-tech trash," National Geographic Magazine (2008-01).
• David Owen, "The efficiency dilemma," The New Yorker(December 20, 2010).

HOMEWORK BEFORE DISCUSSION

• Post your five-minute slideshow presentation to your personal wiki page. This must be a working presentation; in other words, once your TA downloads it and clicks on it, it should open up and play with both images and narration.

DISCUSSION MEETING

• You will begin to screen the slideshow presentations and talk about them.
• Your TA will save some time at the end of class to discuss the upcoming second midterm.

ONLINE OVER THE WEEKEND

This week you will review and revise your previous blog postings to think about the online "voice" that you have developed over the course of this semester, and how that differs from the voice you construct for yourself through written and print materials.

• Go back through your discussion section blog and copy out every single entry you have posted for these weekly online assignments all semester long, pasting them all into a single word processing document, one by one, with the title and date indicated for each entry.  (You don't have to include the comments you left on other students' blog posts -- just your own main blog posts.) 
• Then go through and proofread this big compendium of blog posts.  Check all of your spelling and grammar.  Make sure you have written in complete sentences all the way through.  Add paragraph breaks if appropriate.  And make sure you have correctly spelled/identified any authors' names you have reference. Your goal is ZERO MISTAKES.
• Format this blog post compendium document as a regular writing assignment -- with 12-point Times or Times Roman font, one-inch margins, and double spacing -- and print it out so you can hand it in to your TA at the next discussion section.  You will want to read over it one more time in printed form, because you will probably catch some last-minute typos if you do. 
• Finally, write a NEW blog post back on your discussion section blog discussing how you have presented yourself through your online writing in the class so far, and whether that is the same way that you present yourself in other aspects of your scholarly career in LIS 201 (eg. in person in discussion section, through your formal written assignments, and/or through your work on exams).  Which of your self-presentations is the most "true" or the most effective?  Which showcases your talents the best? 

FOR MORE INFORMATION

• Leslie A. Byster and Ted Smith, "The electronics production life cycle: From toxics to sustainability," in Ted Smith et al., eds.,Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry (2006).
• Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller, "Ecological ethics and media technology," International Journal of Communication 2 (2008). 
• Matthew Power, "The solution: Bolivia's lithium dreams," Virginia Quarterly Review (2011).
• Tom Vanderbilt, "Data center overload," New York Times (14 June 2009). 
• UW-Madison Green IT resources
• Wisconsin electronics recycling law