New draft syllabus for "Visions & Revisions of Cyberspace"

I taught this course as a Masters-level class at NYU a year ago, and the syllabus worked very nicely. Now, my challenge has been to improve, update and upgrade it for my Ph.D. students at Rutgers. I think it's pretty good, but please weigh in and let me know how I can make it better (especially you, former students of mine!) (UPDATED 8/29)

9/1: Introduction

 

9/8: No Class Today

 

9/15: The Memex and the Mushroom Cloud

 

• Bush, V. (1945). As we may think. The Atlantic.
• Borges, J. L. (1941). The library of Babel.
• Rifkin, J. (1995). A view of the future. Utne Reader.
• Slouka, M. (1996). Reality is death. (from War of the Worlds)

 

OPTIONAL:

 

• Leiner, et al (2000). A Brief History of the Internet.

 

9/22: The Metaverse

 

• Nelson, T. (1974). Computer lib/dream machines. [excerpt]
• Baudrillard, J. (1988). Simulacra and Simulations [excerpt]
• Chesher, C. (1994). Colonizing Virtual Reality.
• Dibbell, J. (2008). Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World
• Pendragon, H. (2008) Griefers: Why Dibbell’s Wired Article Was 1-Sided.

 

OR

 

• Neil Stephenson, Snow Crash (Bantam, 1992)

 

9/29: Rules and Regulation

 

• Internet Society, DNS Root Name Servers Explained for Non-Experts
• Mueller, M. (2002). Dancing the Quango: ICANN as International Regulatory Regime.
• Wu, Tim (2006). Network Neutrality: Competition, Innovation, and Nondiscriminatory Access
• Sinnreich & Zager (2008). E-Speech: The (Uncertain) Future of Free Expression
• Hinze, G. (2010). Preliminary Analysis of the Officially Released ACTA Text

 

OR

 

• Lawrence Lessig, Code v2 (Basic Books, 2006)

 

10/6: Free Love, Free Speech, Free Software

 

• Stallman, R. (1985). GNU manifesto
• Barlow, J. P. (1996). A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.
• Markoff, J. (1995). A Most Wanted Cyberthief is caught in his own web.
• Turner, F. (2005). Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy.
• Christopher Kelty (2005). Geeks, Social Imaginaries, and Recursive Publics

 

OR

 

• Doug Thomas, Hacker Culture (U. Minn Press, 2002)
  
  

OPTIONAL

 

• 2600, Interview with Kevin Mitnick (video)

 

10/13: dot-com Fantasies

 

FOUR OF THE FOLLOWING:

 

• Dyson, E. (1995). Intellectual value. Wired.
• Meeker, M. (1995). The Internet Report. Morgan Stanley. [Read part 1. The rest is skimmable].
• Sinnreich, A. (2001). Remixing the Distribution Chain for Digital Music. Jupiter Research.
• CNET, Top 10 dot-com flops
• Anderson, C. (2004). The Long Tail. Wired.
• O’Reilly, T. (2005). What is Web 2.0?
• Schiff, S. (2006). Know it all. The New Yorker.
• boyd, d. (2007). Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace.

 

OR

 

• Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (Vintage Books, 1996)

 

10/20: Our Second Selves: Video Games and Identity

GUEST: Joost van Dreunen

 

FOUR OF THE FOLLOWING:

 

• Bogost, I. (2006). Playing politics: Videogames for Politics, Activism and Advocacy. First Monday. Special Issue number 7. (10 pages)
• Ito, et al (2008). Living and Learning with New Media (pp. 18-39)
• Brathwaite, B. (2007). Sex in video games. Charles River Media. Chapter 4, pp. 89-122.
• Parisi, D. (2007). Playing the Interface: Video Games as Bodily Techniques [Unpublished paper]. (19 pages)
• Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture. (Chapter 3)
• Costikyan, G. (2007) Super Columbine Massacre: Artwork or Menace?

 

OR

 

• Dibbell, J. Play Money. (Basic Books, 2006)

 

 

10/27: Configurable Culture

 

·      Sinnreich, A. Mashed Up: Music, Technology and the Rise of Configurable Culture (U. Mass Press, 2010)

 

11/3: The Cloud

 

·      Downes, S. The Cloud and Collaboration

·      Zittrain, J. Lost in the Cloud

·      Golden, B. Clueless on the Charles: How Zittrain’s Cloud Missive Got it Wrong

·      Doctorow, C. Not Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining

OPTIONAL:

 

·      Google Blog, Introducing the Chrome OS

·      Chappell, Windows Azure Whitepaper

 

11/10: Surveillance, Sensors and Semantics

 

• Brin, D. (1998). The transparent society.
• Berners-Lee, et al. (2001). The Semantic Web.
• Dodson, S. (2008). The Net Shapes Up to Get Physical.
• Bossewitch & Sinnreich (2009). Beyond the Panopticon: Strategic Agency in an Age of Limitless Information
• EFF, Surveillance Self-Defense Project

 

11/17: Adventures in MeatSpace

GUEST: Laura Forlano

 

·      Doctorow, C. (2004) Anda’s Game

·      NY Times (2004). Quick, After Him, Pacman Went Thataway

·      Laura Forlano (2010). WiFi Geographies: When Code Meets Place

·      Area/Code, Big Games Manifesto (1 page)

·      Patti Maes, The Sixth Sense (Video)

 

11/22 (Monday of Thanksgiving Week): Field Trip

 

·      Readings and destination TBD

·      Exact date/time TBD

 

12/1: Singularity and Fracture

 

• Vinge, V. (1993). What is the Singularity?
• Kurzweil, R. (2010). Q&A on The Singularity (pdf)
• Lanier, J. (2010). You Are Not A Gadget. [Chapters 2-3]
• Baym, N. (2010). Personal Connections in the Digital Age [Conclusion: “The Myth of Cyberspace”]

 

OPTIONAL:

 

• Vance, A. (2010). Merely Human? That’s So Yesterday