English 407A Syllabus

Steven Shaviro

Winter 1998

Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:30 to 4:20pm
Communications 214/216 (New Media Research Lab)

We will be reading three books in their entirety: The Medium is the Massage, by Marshall McLuhan, Virtual Worlds, by Benjamin Woolley; and The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age, by Allucquere Rosanne Stone. We will also be reading selections from two collections of essays: High Noon on the Electronic Frontier, ed. Peter Ludlow (henceforth HN) (much of which is also available online), and Internet Culture, ed. David Porter (henceforth IC). In addition, we will be reading a wide range of fiction and essays online. Finally, throughout the quarter we will be referring to one reference text, HTML for the World Wide Web by Elizabeth Castro, as an aid in setting up homepages.

Dates

Topic

Reading

1.Jan 5, 7

Introduction: Entering Cyberspace

  • Vannevar Bush, As We May Think
  • Howard Rheingold, "A Slice of Life in my Virtual Community" (HN 413-436) (also available online)
  • Shawn Wilbur, "An Archaeology of Cyberspaces" (IC 5-22) (also available online )

2.Jan 12, 14

A World of Information

3.Jan 21

The Philosophy of Virtual Reality: Marshall McLuhan

4.Jan 26, 28

Cyberspace: Policies and Prospects

  • Woolley, Virtual Worlds, chapters 7-12
  • Mark Poster, "Cyberdemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere" (IC 201-217)
  • Joseph Lockard, "Progressive Politics, Electronic Individualism, and the Myth of Virtual Community" (IC 219-231)
  • Mitch Kapor, Where is the Digital Highway Really Heading?
  • Mike Goodwin, "Some 'Property' Problems" (HN 113-121)
  • Dorothy Denning, "Concerning Hackers" (HN137-163)
  • Stephen Levy, "Crypto Rebels" (HN 185-205)
  • John Perry Barlow, "Jackboots on the Infobahn" (HN 207-213)
  • Dorothy Denning, "The Clipper Chip Will Block Crime" (HN 215-216)
  • The Denning-Barlow Clipper Chip Debate (HN 217-224)
  • David Chaum, "Achieving Electronic Privacy (HN225-236)
  • HN Part IV: "Censorship and Sysop Liability" (HN 251-310)
  • The Cyberporn Debate

5.Feb 2, 4

Hypertext and The Aesthetics of Cyberspace

6.Feb 9, 11

Virtual Bodies

  • The Visible Human Project
  • Mizuko Ito, "Virtuality Embodied: The Reality of Fantasy in a Multi-User Dungeon" (IC 87-109)
  • Jeffrey Fisher, "The Postmodern Paradiso: Dante, Cyberpunk, and the Technosophy of Cyberspace" (IC 111-128)

7. Feb 18

The Virtual Life: Allucquere Rosanne Stone

  • Sandy Stone, The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age
  • Sandy Stone, Mondo 2000 Interview

8.Feb 23, 25

Virtual Communities

  • Pavel Curtis, "MUDding" (HN 347-373)
  • Julian Dibbell, A Rape In Cyberspace (HN 375-395)
  • Shannon McRae, Coming Apart at the Seams (a slightly different version is available as "Flesh Made Word," IC 73-86)
  • Amy Bruckman, "Gender Swapping on the Internet" (HN 317-325)
  • Elizabeth Reid, "Text-Based Virtual Realities" (HN 327-345)
  • Elizabeth Reid, "Communication and Community on IRC" (HN 397-411)
  • Sherry Turkle, Who Am We?

9.March 2, 4

Student Projects

10.March 9, 11

Student Projects

Project Presentations

Class Requirements

  1. A personal homepage, which includes links relevant to what we have been reading and discussing in class, as well as personal interests and material related to your research project.
  2. A term-long research project exploring some aspect of life online or electronic culture. The results will be presented orally to the class in the last two weeks of the course, and therefore they should be ready by March 3rd. The results should also be written up and handed in as a final paper. For these projects, collaborative work is encouraged.
  3. Participation in class discussion and in discussions on the class newsgroup.

See also the homepage for this class.