Week 03: The electromechanical control revolution

LECTURE ON TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16

James Beniger, "The Control Revolution," in Albert H. Teich, ed.,Technology and the Future (1990).
William Cronon, "The busy hive," in Nature's Metropolis (1991).
Simon Head, "The rise of the reengineers," in The New Ruthless Economy (2003).

If it's your week 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 #1 to your personal wiki pages (create a separate subpage so that your peer reviewers can just "comment" at the bottom).

First five minutes: QUIZ on reading terms
Two student presentations (#3 and #4) on the readings (and two student extemporaneous responses).
Discuss this week's lecture and required readings.
Your TA will set up peer review groups ( 6 students in each) and post these on your discussion section wiki in case you forget.

This week you are going to explore some historical news databases.

Pick a term relating to the modern information society -- ” "world wide web" or "computer" or "cell phone" or "digital divide" or ... well, use your imagination. The only constraint is that you can't pick a term that one of your fellow sectionmates has used (so it is in your interest to do this assignment early!)
Try to find the earliest journalistic use of this term in three different historical newspaper databases provided by ProQuest: the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times.
Now take the same term and try to find its earliest use in three different scholarly article databases: ProQuest, Project Muse, andJStor.
Write a brief post on your section blog about the ways in which your term was first used, and whether it still has the same meaning today.
Visit another student's post and comment on what they found out about the term that they explored.
You must finish this online activity before next week's lecture.