Syllabus

Before class begins
Week 01 - Tues. September 02 - Introduction
Week 02 - Tues. September 09 - Print culture
Week 03 - Tues. September 16 - Control revolution
Week 04 - Tues. September 23 - Postindustrial economy
Week 05 - Tues. September 30 - Network society
Week 06 - Tues. October 07 - FIRST MIDTERM
Week 07 - Tues. October 14 - Cyberspace
Week 08 - Tues. October 21 - Big data
Week 09 - Tues. October 28 - Social networking
Week 10 - Tues. November 04 - Information labor
Week 11 - Tues. November 11 - Games
Week 12 - Tues. November 18 - Sustainability
Week 13 - Tues. November 25 - THANKSGIVING
Week 14 - Tues. December 02 - SECOND MIDTERM
Week 15 - Tues. December 09 - PRESENTATIONS
Finals Week

---

The week before classes begin

Prepare yourself for the course

• Read through this whole LIS 201 course web site at lis201.blogspot.com (bookmark it in your web browser) so you know what to expect from this very unusual and very labor-intensive course!
• You may want to learn more about the professor at his personal web site. (Or you may not care.)
• Make sure to purchase your bound reader at Student Print.

Readings to complete before the first lecture

These articles are not in your printed reader, but are available online in order to encourage you to explore our digital reading repository. They cover tools to improve your writing and speaking skills.

• William Strunk jr. and E.B. White, "Elementary Principles of Composition," The Elements of Style (1979).
• University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center, "Acknowledging, Paraphrasing, and Quoting Sources."
• University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Writing Center, "Effective E-Mail Communication."
• Oberlin College, "Educational Guidelines on Electronic Social Networking."

For more information

• Anonymous, "I'm very interested in hearing some half-baked theories," The Onion (November 9, 2005). 
• Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams,The craft of research, 2nd ed. (2003), selections. 
• Dan Gillmor, "Principles for a new media literacy" (Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 2008).
• Peter A. Facione, "Critical thinking: What it is and why it counts" (1998).
• Anne Lamott, "Shitty first drafts" (1994). 
• Doug Lederman, "Study examines contradictions that define today's young people," Inside Higher Ed (August 21, 2012).
• Stephen E. Lucas, The art of public speaking, 6th ed. (1998), selections. 
• Brandon Royal, The Little Red Writing Book [brief selection] (2004).
• Laurie Rozakis, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Public Speaking, second edition [brief selection] (1999).
• William Strunk jr. and E.B. White, The elements of style, 3rd ed. (1979), selections. 
• Ben Yagoda, "The seven deadly sins of student writers," Chronicle of Higher Education (08 September 2006); 5 pages.

---

Week 01: Introduction to four information societies

Lecture on Tuesday, September 02

Lecture meets this week at 11am in Humanities 2650 for 75 minutes.   Students are expected to attend all lectures and to take notes. By the Friday after each in-person lecture, I'll upload a PDF version of any slides I showed in lecture to our Box site (and link the site to the lecture title). We may also experiment with lecture-capture technology to record the live lecture experience; if this works, I will provide links to those videos as well. Any student seen Facebooking, shopping, chatting, gaming, or otherwise multitasking with a distracting non-class activity in lecture will be asked to close their laptop  -- even if you are typing notes at the same time.

• Introduction to the course

Readings to complete before discussion

Buy your course reader from Student Print and read the articles below. Each week, you need to have your readings completed by the time you get to discussion section, in order to be able to discuss them with your TA and fellow students. We will quiz you on selected terms from the readings as well, which will be revealed at the end of each lecture.

(Unsure how closely you should be reading these? The professor has posted two annotated examples of readings, to show what he highlights when he reads through them.)

• Greg Downey, "Introduction: Communication meanings and social purposes," in Technology and Communication in American History (2011).

Homework to complete before discussion

Just make sure to read through this web syllabus.

Discussion section meeting

All discussion sections meet this week; consult your schedule.  Students are expected to attend all in-person discussion sections. If you are absent from section, you must email your TA within 24 hours of the missed section. If you are absent from two discussion sections in a row, you will receive a concerned email from the professor. After that we will refer your absence to the Office of the Dean of Students!

• Meet your TA and your fellow students in person! (Your TA may have you create a "table tent" to help everybody learn names.)
• Discuss the syllabus and grading.
• Your TA will assign you to specific weeks and readings for your prepared oral presentation and your written article critique. (You won't know when you'll be called upon to do your extemporaneous oral presentation.) These will all be listed on your section wiki (which you'll join next week).
• Discuss techniques for effective oral presentations.
• Discuss the oral presentation grading metric.
• Discuss this week's lecture and required readings.

Online over the weekend

Nearly every weekend you will have online homework and writing.  This weekend, after your first section meeting, you'll learn how to use your discussion section weblog. 

• Please click here for a detailed weblog tutorial.
• You must finish this online activity before next week's lecture.
  

For more information

• David Auerbach, "The stupidity of computers," n+1 (2012). 
• Andrew Chadwick, "Some conceptual tools," in Internet politics: States, citizens, and new communication technologies (2006). 
• Alfred D. Chandler jr., "The information age in historical perspective," in Alfred D. Chandler jr. and James W. Cortada, eds., A nation transformed by information: How information has shaped the United States from colonial times to the present (2000). 
• Susan J. Douglas, "The turn within: The irony of technology in a globalized world," American Quarterly (2006). 
• Paul Edwards, "Infrastructure and modernity: Force, time, and social organization in the history of sociotechnical systems," in Thomas J. Misa et al. eds., Modernity and technology (2003). 
• Paul Edwards, "Thinking globally," A vast machine: Computer models, climate data, and the politics of global warming (2010), 1-25. 
• James Gleick, "After the flood," in The Information: A history, a theory, a flood (2011). 
• Adam Gopnik, "The Information: How the Internet gets inside us," The New Yorker (2011-02-14). 
• Stephen Lubar, "Introduction," in Infoculture: The Smithsonian book of information age inventions (1993). 
• Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman, "Introductory essay," in The social shaping of technology, 2nd ed. (1999). 
• David E. Nye, "Critics of technology," in Carroll Pursell, ed., A companion to American technology (2005). 
• Merritt Roe Smith, "Technological determinism in American culture," in Merritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx, eds., Does technology drive history? The dilemma of technological determinism (1994). 
• Frank Webster, "What information society?" The Information Society (1994).
• Langdon Winner, "Do artifacts have politics?" (1986) in Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman, eds., The social shaping of technology, 2nd ed. (1999). 

---

Week 02: Print culture and literacy

Lecture on Tuesday, September 09

• Print culture and literacy

Readings to complete before discussion

• Deborah Brandt, "The means of production: Literacy and stratification at the twenty-first century," in Literacy in American lives (2001).
• Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway, "A framework for the history of publishing and reading in the United States 1880-1940," in Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway, eds., A History of the Book in America, vol. 4 (2009).
• Ted Striphas, "E-Books and the Digital Future," in The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control (2009).

Homework to complete before discussion

• If it's your week to write a 500-word article report, you must post this to your section blog before your section meets.  An article report should briefly summarize the main argument of the article, and then pose a question or comment in response. You will also want to say a little something about the author of the article and the way people responded to it. What can you find online about the person who wrote the article? Can you find any online reaction to the article? (It probably came from a book, and you can probably find book reviews.)
• If it's your week to give a speech, prepare and practice!  Otherwise, prepare for a possible extemporaneous speech response.

Discussion meeting

• First five minutes: QUIZ on reading terms (which will have been previewed in lecture)
• Two four-minute student speeches (#1 and #2), one on each of the readings (and two two-minute student extemporaneous responses).  Your TA will designate a classmate to record your presentations on digital video. The recording will be either emailed to you or uploaded to your discussion section wiki (which you'll be joining this weekend). After watching the recording, you must email your TA with one substantive way in which you could improve your delivery.
• Discuss this week's lecture and required readings.
• Discuss tasks and strategies for writing assignment #1. (Rough draft due on wiki by start of next week's discussion.)
• Discuss the written presentation grading metric.

Online over the weekend

This week you'll learn how to use your discussion section wiki:

• Please click here for a wiki tutorial
• You must finish this online activity before next week's lecture.
  

For more information

• Deborah Brandt, "Accumulating literacy: How four generations of one American family learned to write," in Literacy in American lives (2001). 
• Richard D. Brown, "Early American origins of the information age" (2000).
• Kenneth Cmiel, "Libraries, books, and the information age," in David Paul Nord et al., eds., A history of the book in America, vol. 5 (2009).  
• Susan Jacoby, "The culture of distraction," in The age of American unreason (2008). 
• David Levy, "A bit of digital history," in Scrolling forward: Making sense of documents in the digital age (2001). 
• Walter Ong, "Orality, literacy, and modern media" (1982). 
• John B. Thompson, "The digital revolution and the publishing world," in Books in the digital age: The transformation of academic and higher education publishing in Britain and the United States (2005).
• Wayne A. Wiegand, "The American public library: Construction of a community reading institution," in Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway, eds., A History of the Book in America, vol. 4 (2009).
• JoAnne Yates, "Communication technology and the growth of internal communication," in Control through communication: The rise of system in American management (1989).

Special note

Please note that Wednesday during the third week of classes is generally the last day to drop without a "DR" on your transcript. (You can still drop through the ninth week of class but there will be a notation on the transcript.)

---

Week 03: The electromechanical control revolution

Lecture on Tuesday, September 16

• The control revolution and modernity

Readings to complete before discussion

• 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).

Homework to complete before discussion

• 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).

Discussion meeting

• 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.

Online over the weekend

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, and JStor.
• 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.

For more information

• Margo Anderson, "The Census and industrial America in the Gilded Age," in The American Census: A Social History (1988).
• James Beniger, "Introduction," in The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society (1986).
• Ruth Schwartz Cowan, "Communications technologies and social control," in A social history of American technology (1997).
• Ruth Schwartz Cowan, "Industrial society and technological systems," in A Social History of American Technology (1997).
• Greg Downey, "Telegraph messenger boys: Crossing the borders between history of technology and human geography," The professional geographer 55:2 (2003).
• Richard R. John, "Recasting the information infrastructure for the industrial age," in Alfred Chandler jr. and James Cortada, eds., A nation transformed by information (2000). 
• Steven Lubar, "Telegraph" and "Telephone" in Infoculture (1993). 
• David Nye, "Shaping communication networks: Telegraph, telephone, computer," Social Research (1997). 
• Kevin Robins and Frank Webster, "The long history of the information revolution," in Times of the technoculture: From the information society to the virtual life (1999). 
• Oliver Zunz, "Inside the skyscraper," in Making America Corporate 1870-1920 (1990). 

---

Week 04: The postindustrial service economy

Lecture on Tuesday, September 23

• Depression to deindustrialization

Readings to complete before discussion

• Isaac Asimov, “Visit to the World’s Fair of 2014,” New York Times (16 August 1964).
  
• Thomas J. Sugrue, "'The damning mark of false prosperities': The deindustrialization of Detroit," in The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (1996).
• Laurence Veysey, "A postmortem on Daniel Bell's postindustrialism," American Quarterly 34:1 (1982).
  
• Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano [chapters 1-3] (1952).

Homework to complete before discussion

• 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.
• Complete your peer reviews of your fellow students' paper #1 drafts, posted as comments on their pages of the discussion section wiki.

Discussion meeting

• First five minutes: QUIZ on reading terms
• Two student presentations (#5 and #6) on the readings (and two student extemporaneous responses).
• Discuss this week's lecture and required readings.

Online over the weekend

This week you'll explore the Prelinger Archives, which contains thousands fantastic vintage educational and corporate promotional films, some of which deal with information and communication technology. Many of these films are in color with sound, and most are short (15 or 20 minutes).

• Search the Prelinger Archives for the most interesting vintage film for a 21st century class on the "information society" that you can.
• Please note: Within each discussion section, every student needs to find a different film to post! This means you need to see what's already been posted in your section to avoid duplication! (Students who do this assignment earlier might have an easier time of it.)
• Post a link to your film on your discussion section blog and make an argument about why this film is useful to students of our modern information infrastructure -- what can we learn from the film you found?
• Watch at least one of your fellow students' suggested films and post a comment with your reaction.
• You must finish this online activity before next week's lecture.

For more information

• Benjamin Barber, "From soft goods to service," in Jihad vs. McWorld (2001). 
• Daniel Bell, "Notes on the post-industrial society (I)," The Public Interest (1967).
• Daniel Bell, "Post-industrial society," in The coming of post-industrial society (1973).
• Martin Campbell-Kelly et al., "The maturing of the mainframe: The rise of IBM," in Computer: A History of the Information Machine (2014).
• Jefferson Cowie, "Introduction" and "The distances in between" in Capital Moves: RCA's 70-year Quest for Cheap Labor (1999).
• Nick Dyer-Witheford, "Revolutions," in Cyber-Marx: Cycles and circuits of struggle in high-technology capitalism (1999). 
• Esther Dyson, George Gilder, George Keyworth, and Alvin Toffler, "Cyberspace and the American dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age," The Information Society 12 (1996).
• Nathan Ensmenger, "The Cosa Nostra of the data processing industry," in The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise (2010).
• Ronald R. Kline, "Cybernetics, management science, and technology policy: The emergence of 'information technology' as a keyword, 1948-1985," Technology and Culture (2006). 
• Robert Reich, "The three jobs of the future," in The work of nations: Preparing ourselves for 21st century capitalism (1992). 
• Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano [chapters 1-3] (1952).

---

Week 05: The global network society

Lecture on Tuesday, September 30

• Networks of cities

This week I will distribute a list of terms and essay questions to study which will help you prepare for our first in-class exam next week. (I will probably distribute these on our course news feed.)

Readings to complete before discussion

• William Lazonick, “Globalization of the ICT labour force,” in R. Mansell et al. eds., The Oxford Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies (2007).
• Christian Sandvig, “Connection at Ewiiaapaayp Mountain,” in L. Nakamura et al. eds., Race after the Internet (2012).
• Jan A.G.M. van Dijk,"Social structure" in The Network Society (2006).

Homework to complete before discussion

• 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.
• Finish the final draft of paper #1.

Discussion meeting

• First five minutes: QUIZ on reading terms
• Two student presentations (#7 and #8) on the readings (and two student extemporaneous responses).
• Discuss this week's lecture and required readings.
• Turn in a printed final version of paper #1.
• Review for first midterm exam.

Online over the weekend

No online activity this weekend. Study for your exam next week.

For more information

• Manuel Castells, "The space of flows," in The rise of the network society (1996). 
• Manuel Castells, "An introduction to the information age," City 2:7 (1997). 
• Andrew Chadwick, "Access, inclusion, and the digital divide," in Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New Communication Technologies (2006).
• Steve Coll, "The Internet: For better or for worse," New York Review of Books (April 07, 2011).
• Paul Edwards et al., "Understanding infrastructure: Dynamics, tensions, and design" (2007).
• Richard Florida, "How the crash will reshape America," The Atlantic (March 2009).
• Nicholas Gane and David Beer, "Network," in New Media: The Key Concepts (2008).
• Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin, "Introduction" in Telecommunications and the city: Electronic spaces, urban places (1996). 
• Stephen Graham, "Introduction," in The cybercities reader (2004). 
• Tim O'Reilly, "What is Web 2.0? Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software" (2005). 
• Felix Stalder, "Flows and places," in Manuel Castells: The Theory of the Network Society (2006).

---

Week 06: FIRST MIDTERM EXAM

Exam on Tuesday, October 07

Our in-class midterm exam will be held in the normal lecture hall. Please arrive a bit early so we can start on time.

Readings to complete before discussion

This week's reading relates to your software training session and your multimedia assignment, not your exam.

• Garr Reynolds, "Presentation tips," http://www.garrreynolds.com/preso-tips/ (2013). 

Homework to complete before discussion

None.

Discussion meeting

Attend software training sessions, not your regular discussion.  Rather than hold your normal discussion section, all students will attend software training sessions scheduled in various computer labs around campus, during your normal discussion section time. You will receive customized training on PowerPoint presentation software that you may use for your multimedia project. This training is offered courtesy of the DoIT Software Training for Students program.

For sections meeting Wednesday, October 8th:
Location: 150 Animal Sciences
Time: During your regularly-scheduled section time

For sections meeting Thursday, October 9th:
Location: 150 Animal Sciences
Time: During your regularly-scheduled section time

For sections meeting Friday, October 10th:
Location: 150 Animal Sciences
Time: During your regularly-scheduled section time

You should feel free to bring your own laptops if you have your own copy of PowerPoint.

Online over the weekend

This week your online activity will involve the selection of the book that you are going to read and review.  Each student in your discussion section must choose a different book to read, so if you fear someone else will pick the same book as you, finish this assignment early!  And as a final challenge, the book must have been published in the last two years  --”  which narrows the field of candidates considerably!

• Think about some search terms or phrases which might quickly and effectively lead you to interesting books on "the information society." Will using the term "information" suffice? What will using the search term "information society" leave out? Be creative.
• Using an online bookstore like Amazon.com, do a search for a book related to the information society that you would like to read. (We are starting in an online book store in order to make sure that the book is still in print.) Narrow your choice down to three candidates that have been published within the last two years. Which book has the most pages? Which costs the most? Which has the best reviews?
• Once you have found three possible books, look each of them up through the public web interface of WorldCat. This is a meta-catalog of all US public and university library catalogs. Which book is held by more libraries? What are the subject classifications of each book? Do they differ? Do they suggest further, more interesting search terms? (You may want to go back to step #2 with these terms.)
• Look each book up on Google Books. Which book seems to have generated the most chatter on the Web? Which has more reviews available through Google? Are any of them in the public domain?
• Finally, look up each book on Library Thing. (You may have to create a free account on this service in order to search, but it's worth it.) Which book has been read by more users of this social networking service? Which book seems to match best with other books that you think you might like?
• Decide which book you want to read at this point.
• Now do a search of your chosen book on two academic journal databases: ProQuest and Project Muse. What journals have reviewed your book? Who are the reviewers? What books have the reviewers themselves written? Read and then print out or otherwise save these book reviews (you will use them in your final paper).
• Create a new post on your discussion section blog that describes the candidate books you considered, the book you ended up choosing, and the process you took to choose it. Include an image of the cover (from Amazon.com) and a citation to any academic reviews you found.
• Comment on another student's chosen book. (Has anyone chosen the same book as you? If they posted their choice to the blog before you did, then you need to start over and pick a different book!)
• You must finish this online activity before next week's lecture.

For more information

• Edward Tufte, "The cognitive style of PowerPoint" (2003).
  

---

Week 07: Cyberspace and hypermedia

Lecture on Tuesday, October 14

• Films: The Machine is (Changing) Us (Michael Wesch; 2009) and Revolution in Cairo (Frontline; 2011). 

Readings to complete before discussion

• Henry Jenkins et al., “Where Web 2.0 went wrong,” Spreadable Media (2013).
• Robert McChesney, “How can the political economy of communication help us understand the Internet?” in Digital Disconnect (2013).

Homework to complete before discussion

• 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.

Discussion meeting

• First five minutes: QUIZ on reading terms
• Two student presentations (#9 and #10) on the readings (and two student extemporaneous responses).
• Discuss this week's lecture and required readings.
• Discuss tasks and strategies for writing assignment #2. (Rough draft due on wiki by start of next week's discussion.)
• Graded paper #1 handed back.
• Graded midterm #1 handed back.

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.
• 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, perform a Google search on "Memex" to find an intriguing commentary (news article, scholarly article, blog post, cartoon, video, whatever) on this subject.  ("Intriguing" here could mean that you find it very insightful or that you find it entirely uninformed.)  Then go to your discussion section blog and write a new post reacting to that commentary.  Include a link to the original commentary.  Make sure your commentary is constructive and civil, because the original author may notice and want to reply!
• Read and reply to at least one other student's blog posting.
• You must finish this online activity before next week's lecture.

For more information

• Martin Campbell-Kelly et al., "The Internet," in Computer: A History of the Information Machine, third edition (2014).
• Steve Coll, "The Internet: For better or for worse," New York Review of Books (2011-04-07). 
• Cory Doctorow, "When sysadmins ruled the earth," Baen's Universe (2006).
• Greg Downey, "Jumping contexts of space and time," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (April-June 2004). 
• Paul N. Edwards, "Y2K: Millennial reflections on computers as infrastructure," History and Technology 15 (1998). 
• Nathan L. Ensmenger, "Making programming masculine" (2008). 
• Gordon Graham, "The radically new and the merely novel: How transformative is the Internet?" in The Internet: A philosophical inquiry (1999). 
• Ed Krol, "How the Internet works" in The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog (1992).
• Jennifer Light, "When computers were women," Technology and Culture (1999). 
• Steven Lubar, "Before computers," in Infoculture (1993).
• Rebecca MacKinnon, "Networked authoritarianism," in Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom (2012).
• Roy Rosenzweig, "Wizards, bureaucrats, warriors, and hackers: Writing the history of the Internet," American Historical Review (1998). 
• Lee Sproull, "Computers in US households since 1997" (2000). 
• Fred Turner, "Where the counterculture met the new economy: The WELL and the origins of virtual community," Technology and Culture (2005). 
• Alex Wright, "The Web that wasn't," in Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages (2007).

---

Week 08: Big data and social surveillance

Lecture on Tuesday, October 21

• Beyond Google

Readings to complete before discussion

• Tarleton Gillespie, “The relevance of algorithms,” in T. Gillespie et al. eds., Media Technologies (2014).
• David Lyon, “Surveillance, power, and everyday life,” in R. Mansell et al. eds., The Oxford Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies (2007).

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: QUIZ on reading terms
• 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, you will discover how much information you can find out about yourself online.

• First, do a geodemographic marketing analysis on yourself, by searching online for data about the place where you live which someone might ascribe to you. Here are some sites to start with:
• http://www.whitepages.com/reverse_phone (enter your phone)
• http://factfinder.census.gov/ (enter your zip code)
• http://accessdane.co.dane.wi.us/ (enter your address)
• http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/ (find your hometown and explore income, education, other demographics)
• Next, do a social networking analysis on yourself, by searching for online data specifically about you on various social networking services that you might use  -- Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. Make sure you are not logged in to those services in order to see what an outside visitor would see (you might want to try searching your Facebook identity from a public computer, for example).
• Now do a general Google search, first using your name in different combinations ("Greg Downey," "Downey, Greg," "G Downey," etc.), then using your email address, and finally using your telephone number.
• Can you think of any other sites to search for which might provide either individual or aggregate data to help flesh out your "digital puppet"?
• When you are finished searching these sites, create a new post on your discusion section blog describing the person that a geodemographic firm would see when they look for "you". What do you think about this representation of your existence?
• Comment on at least one other student's posting for this assignment.
• You must finish this online activity before next week's lecture.

For more information

• James Bamford, "They know much more than you think," The New York Review of Books (15 August 2013).
• Vannevar Bush, "As we may think" Atlantic Monthly (1945) and Vannevar Bush, "Memex revisited" (1967). 
• Greg Downey,  "The librarian and the Univac: Automation and labor at the 1962 Seattle Worldss Fair," in C. McKercher and V. Mosco, eds., Knowledge workers in the information society (Lexington Books, 2007). 
• James Gleick, "How Google dominates us," New York Review of Books (2011-08-18).
• Eric Goldman, "Wikipedia's labor squeeze and its consequences," Journal on Telecommunication and High-Tech Law (2009).
• Christopher Ketcham et al., "The more you use Google, the more Google knows about you," AlterNet (2010). 
• Lev Manovich, "Trending: The promises and challenges of big social data," in Matthew K. Gold, ed., Debates in the Digital Humanities (2012).
• Eli Pariser, "The user is the content," in The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You (2011).
• Natasha Singer, "Secret e-scores chart consumers' buying power," New York Times (August 18, 2012).
• Siva Vaidhyanathan, "Google's ways and means," in The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry) (2011).
• Jonathan Zittrain, "The lessons of Wikipedia," in The future of the Internet, and how to stop it (2008). 

Special note

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

---

Week 09: Social networking and online immersion

Lecture on Tuesday, October 28 

• Film: Disconnected (2008) 

Readings to complete before discussion

• Ramesh Srinivasan, "Bridges between cultural and digital worlds in Revolutionary Egypt," The Information Society 29 (2013), 49-60.
• S. Craig Watkins, "The very well connected: Friending, bonding, and community in the digital age," The Young and the Digital (2009). 

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.
• Complete your peer reviews of your fellow students' paper #2 drafts on their pages of the discussion section wiki.

Discussion meeting

• First five minutes: QUIZ on reading terms
• Two student presentations (#13 and #14)on the readings (and two student extemporaneous responses).
• Discuss this week's lecture and required readings.
• Discuss paper #2 revision strategies.

Online over the weekend

This week's challenge will be especially difficult. Get ready.

• Attempt to survive without using any personal digital social networking tools for the whole weekend, Friday 5pm to Sunday 5pm. Do not consult or post to Facebook or MySpace or LinkedIn or Google+ or whatever else it is that young people these days use for social networking.  Do not Tweet. Do not text. Do not instant-message. Do not Skype. Do not iChat. Do not answer personal emails (or even read them, if you can avoid it). And, yes, do not use your cell phone at all (although you may use a land-line phone or a pay phone). The only thing you are allowed to do is the minimum necessary online participation for other classes you are taking.
• Once the weekend is over (or once you've thrown in the towel if you don't make it to Sunday at 5pm), write about the experience on your discussion section blog. How do you end up communicating with people? How do you coordinate meetings with your friends? How do you survive without taking a Quiz On Your Favorite Star Wars Lego Mini-Figure every hour?
• Comment on at least one other student's write-up.
• Be thankful you weren't a college student before the early 1990s, like I was, when THERE WAS NO WORLD WIDE WEB! (Gasp!)
• You must finish this online activity before next week's lecture.
  

For more information

• Lada A. Adamic, "The social hyperlink," in Joseph Turow et al., eds., The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age (2008).
• Atsushi Akera, "Communities and specialized information businesses," in William Aspray and Paul E. Ceruzzi, eds., The Internet and American business (2008). 
• Andrew Chadwick, "The political economy of internet media," in Internet politics (2006). 
• Caroline Haythornthwaite and Barry Wellman, "The internet in everyday life: An introduction" (2002). 
• Lawrence Lessig, "Cyberspaces," in Code and other laws of cyberspace (1999). 
• Ari Melber, "About Facebook," The Nation (07 January 2008). 
• James Sturm, "Life without the Web," Slate (various postings 2010).
• S. Craig Watkins, "'May I have your attention?' The consequences of anytime, anywhere technology," in The Young and the Digital (2009).
• Duncan Watts, "Small worlds," in Six Degrees: The science of a connected age (2003).
• Langdon Winner, "Who will we be in cyberspace?" The Information Society (1996). 
• Growing up online (60 min). You may reach this film on the PBS web site 

---

Week 10: Information labor and digital divides

Lecture on Tuesday, November 04 

• Apple, Foxconn, and controversy over different meanings of work and the varying conditions for different information workers across the globe. 

Readings before discussion

• David Naguib Pellow and Lisa Sun-Hee Park, “The political economy of work and health in silicon valley,” in The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant Workers, and the High-Tech Global Economy (2002).
• Michael Spence, “Information technology and the integration of the global economy,” in The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World (2011).

Homework 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.
• Finish your final draft of paper #2!

Discussion meeting

• First five minutes: QUIZ on reading terms
• Two student presentations (#15 and #16) on the readings (and two student extemporaneous responses).
• Discuss this week's lecture and required readings.
• Turn in printed final version of paper #2.
• Discuss your final multimedia project ("skeleton" file for Ignite presentation due on wiki next week)

Online over the weekend

This weekend you will explore the presence of casualized labor on the Interent -- and in real communities.

• Manpower Inc. is the world's largest temporary employment firm: "Manpower's worldwide network of 4,500 offices in 80 countries and territories enables the company to meet the needs of its 400,000 clients per year, including small and medium size enterprises in all industry sectors, as well as the world's largest multinational corporations." Explore their web site a bit to get a sense of what this firm does. (They even have a branch on Second Life ...)
• Now go to the US site for Manpower and do a job search in three different areas: (1) Madison, WI; (2) your hometown (or the city closest to your hometown); (2) a town or city you might like to someday live in.
• (Hint: Leave the "Keyword(s)" field on the search page empty, but choose a specific state from the drop-down menu, click on a specific town in the "locations" list, and then click the ">" button to move that town into the search box. Finally, click "Search.")
• What kind of technology skills do these jobs demand? How many temporary vs. permanent jobs are listed? Do these look like good jobs to you?
• Write up a report of your findings, comparing the three places you investigated, for your discussion section blog.
• Comment on at least one other student's posting.
• You must finish this online activity before next week's lecture.
  

For more information

• Karen Chapple, "Foot in the door, mouse in hand: Low-income women, short-term job training programs, and IT careers," in J. McGrath Cohoon and William Aspray, eds., Women and Information Technology: Research on Underrepresentation (2006).
• Mark Deuze, "Creative industries, convergence culture, and media work," Media Work (2007).
• Greg Downey, "Making media work: Time, Space, Identity, and Labor in the Analysis of Information and Communication Infrastructures," in Tarleton Gillespie, Pablo Boczkowski, and Kirsten Foot, eds., Media Technologies (2014).
• Charles Duhigg and David Barboza, "Human costs are built into an iPad," New York Times (January 25, 2012). 
• Virginia Eubanks, "Drowning in the sink or swim economy," Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age (2011). 
• Thomas Haigh, "Remembering the office of the future: The origins of word processing and office automation," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (2006). 
• Karen Hossfeld, "'Their logic against them': Contradictions in sex, race, and class in Silicon Valley" (1990), in A. Nelson et al eds., Technicolor: Race, technology, and everyday life (2001).
• Amitava Kumar, "Temporary access: The Indian H-1B worker in the United States" (2001), in A. Nelson et al eds., Technicolor: Race, technology, and everyday life (2001). 
• Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane, "How computers change work and play," in The new division of labor: How computers are creating the next job market (2004). 
• Andrew Marantz, "My summer at an Indian call center," Mother Jones (2011-07).
• Hanna Rosin, "The end of men," The Atlantic (2010). 
• Janet W. Salaff, "Where home is the office: The new form of flexible work," in Barry Wellman and Caroline Haythornthwaite, eds., The internet in everyday life (2002). 

---

Week 11: Games, simulations, and avatars

Lecture Tuesday, November 11

• Video games

Readings before discussion

• Stephen Kline et al., “The new cyber-city: The interactive game industry in the new millennium,” Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing (2003).
• Carlo Rotella, “No child left untableted,” New York Times (12 September 2013).

Homework 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.
• Upload a working "skeleton file" of your slideshow presentation to your discussion section wiki, and make a link to your personal wiki page. This should be a PowerPoint file that has all the timings correct for the Ignite presentation, with 15-second auto-advance of the slides.

Discussion meeting

• First five minutes: QUIZ on reading terms
• Two student presentations (# 17 and #18) on the readings (and two student extemporaneous responses).  These should be the last article speeches of the semester.
• Discuss this week's lecture and required readings.
• Discuss your book slideshow project.

Online over the weekend

This weekend you'll participate in an augmented reality game.  For this exercise, you should team up with from one to three other students in your discussion section.  At least one student in each team needs to have an iOS device (an Apple iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad).   

• Read through the Aris web site at http://arisgames.org and learn about this augmented reality tool.
• Download the Aris app from the iOS app store at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/aris/id371788434
• Use the app to create an ARIS account and login to the game server.
• Pick one of the available games from the "Location Specific" category (these involve our campus and city).
• Play!
• Blog about your experience playing this sort of game.  (Each group may create a single jointly-authored blog post.)
• (Inspired to create your own augmented reality game?  I'm willing to consider extra credit if you do; let me know.)

For more information

• Sam Anderson, "Just one more game ..." New York Times (April 4, 2012).
• Edward Castronova, "Daily life on a synthetic earth," in Synthetic worlds: The business and culture of online games (2005). 
• Julian Dibbell, "A rape in cyberspace," The Village Voice (1993).
• James Gee, "Good video games, the human mind, and good learning," in Good video games + good learning (2007). 
• Brad King and John Borland, "Gamers, interrupted," in Dungeons and Dreamers: The rise of computer game culture from geek to chic (2003). 
• Stephen Kline et al., "Sim Capital," Digital play: The interaction of technology, culture, and marketing (2003). 
• Stephen Kline et al., "Electronic frontiers: Branding the 'Nintendo Generation' 1985-1990," Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing (2003).
• Stephen Kline et al., "Origins of an industry: Cold warriors, hackers, and suits, 1960-1984," Digital play: The interaction of technology, culture, and marketing (2003).
• Peter Ludlow and Mark Wallace, "The Death of Urizenus," in The Second Life Herald: The virtual tabloid that witnessed the dawn of the metaverse (2007). 
• Kurt Squire, "Open-ended video games: A model for developing learning for the interactive age," in Katie Salen, ed., The ecology of games: Connecting youth, games, and learning (2008).
• Roger Stahl, "Have you played the War on Terror?" Critical Studies in Media Communication (2006).

---

Week 12: Sustainable information infrastructure

Lecture Tuesday, November 18

• We'll consider the global environmental impact of the information society, and watch a bit of the Frontline documentary episode "Digital Dumping Ground".

Readings before discussion

• Rebecca Slayton, “Efficient, secure green: Digital utopianism and the challenge of making the electrical grid ‘smart,’” Information & Culture 48:4 (2013).
• Jonathan Sterne, “Out with the trash: On the future of new media,” in Charles R. Acland, ed., Residual Media (2007).

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

• First five minutes: QUIZ on reading terms
• 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).
• Chris Carroll, "High-tech trash," National Geographic  (2008-01).
• Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller, "Ecological ethics and media technology," International Journal of Communication 2 (2008).
• David Owen, "The efficiency dilemma," The New Yorker (December 20, 2010).
• 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

---

Week 13: THANKSGIVING

LECTURE CANCELLED on Tuesday, November 25

ALL DISCUSSION SECTIONS CANCELLED for Thanksgiving

• Please cook your poultry to an appropriate temperature.

Online over the weekend

A few weeks ago you explored the world of temporary digital employment. As we saw with Deborah Brandt's article in your reader a few weeks ago, employable expertise in literacy (and the technological tools for applying literacy) varies with historical circumstance. This weekend you'll explore some of those circumstances.

• While you're on holiday for Thanksgiving, talk to a parent, aunt, uncle, grandparent, neighbor, employer, teacher, or other significant adult in your life, and ask them to describe for you the most important information technology they use (or once used) in their job. (This doesn't have to be a digital information technology ... typewriters or stenography machines count.) How did they first learn to use this technology? How difficult was it to master? How do they feel that this technology affected their working conditions: did it make them more or less productive? Did it make them enjoy their job more or less?
• Write up a report of your conversation on your discussion section blog, and analyze what you heard with respect to this course and your own experiences.
• Comment on at least one other student's posting.
• You must finish this online activity before next week's lecture.
  

---

Week 14: SECOND MIDTERM EXAM

Exam on Tuesday, December 02

Readings before discussion

• None.  (Not yet, anyway.)

Homework before discussion

• Begin work on your multimedia book review.

Discussion meeting

• Continue to screen the remainder of the slideshow presentations and discuss them.
• Discuss strategies for multimedia book review project.
• Graded paper #2 handed back to students.

Online over the weekend

For your last online activity, you will reflect on your own online experience in this course.

• The "hybrid" or "blended" course approach of LIS 201 -- combining in-person lecture, in-person discussion section, and online activity and writing -- is an increasingly popular mode of educational delivery in higher education. Do a web search and see if you can find a few other examples of hybrid/blended courses, either at UW-Madison or at other universities. How do these examples differ from our approach in LIS 201?
• Think about your own experience with this course. For example: Did the online portions connect with the in-person portions? Did you feel that you were a more effective student in the physical world or the virtual world? Were you able to learn more about your fellow students from online or offline (face-to-face) interactions? Do you feel more comfortable now with online resources like blogs and wikis than you did before taking this course? Should UW instructors increase their use of online components in courses, or should we proceed with greater caution?
• Finally, think about the substantive material from the lectures and readings on the information society that you've worked with all semester long. Did the course lectures and readings bring a better perspective to your own online experiences, both in this course and in your personal life? Or another way of thinking about it: would online course components work differently in a course that wasn't all about the online world of information?
• Write up your findings and your reactions on your discussion section weblog. Be honest, it's OK.
• Comment on at least one other student's posting.
• You must finish this online activity before next week's lecture.

---

Week 15: Student presentations

Lecture on Tuesday, December 09

• Each TA will submit one student presentation for screening before the whole course. You may bring snacks if you like.
• Last fifteen minutes: Fill out overall course evaluation (professor leaves room).

Homework before discussion

• Work on your multimedia book review and bring your questions to section.
• If problems with your slide show were discovered when screened by your TA, fix them and repost.   You must have a working slide show to receive credit for the assignment.

Discussion meeting

• Workshop for the final analytic, multimedia book review.
• Last ten minutes: Fill out discussion section evaluations (TA leaves room).
• Graded exam #2 handed back to students.

---

Final Exam Week

There is no final exam for this course.

Your multimedia book review is due on the last weekday of finals week: Friday, December 19, by 5pm. Post the link to your book review blog to your discussion section wiki (and you may want to email it to your TA as well, just to make sure). Make it serious, and make it look good. No late book reviews will be accepted.

Have a good winter break!