76-292 - Analyzing Internet Culture
Syllabus
instructor: Geoffrey Sauer
office: 245-A Baker Hall
e-mail: gsauer@cmu.edu
phone: 268-2893
These issues will be examined in historical context, such as the past of publishing, film, and broadcast media. Students will begin with introductory readings from cultural studies to understand how this field examines issues in terms of the institutions, practices and roles available to participants. Then, over the course of the semester, we will read the work of cultural critics.
Two short papers, a midterm exam and final research project will be required.
January 15
Introductory comments. Description of the class's online services. Review of the policies and grades. Brief discussion of student experiences with the Internet.
January 17
Read The Economist. 'The Accidental Superhighway: A Survey of the Internet.' July 1, 1995.
<http://www.economist.com/internet.htm>
January 19
Read Cerf, Vinton. 'A Brief History of the Internet and Related Networks.' Washington, DC: InterNIC, 1990.
<http://www.baylor.edu/baylor/Misc/brief_history_of_internet>
Katie Hafner. 'The Creators' in WiReD.
<http://www.hotwired.com/wired/2.12/features/creators.html>
Read the Wall Street Journal editorial 'Befuddled PC Users Flood Help Lines, No Question Seems Too Basic' March 1, 1994.
<http://bears.ece.ucsb.edu/personnel/astornet/humor/humor66.html>
January 22
Read Julian Dibbell's 'Rape in Cyberspace,' in Flame Wars.
<http://www.ludd.luth.se/mud/aber/articles/village_voice.html>
January 24
Read Mark Poster's 'Cyberdemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere.'
<http://joshua.hnet.uci.edu/mposter/writings/democ.html>
January 26
Read John Perry Barlow's 'Crime and Puzzlement.'
<gopher://wiretap.spies.com/00/Library/Cyber/barlow.txt>
Read John Perry Barlow's 'Decrypting the Puzzle Palace,' from Communications of the ACM, June, 1992.
<http://www.eff.org/pub/Publications/John_Perry_Barlow/ HTML/decrypting_puzzle_palace.html>
January 29
Read issue 18 of Bad Subjects: 'The Cyberspace Issue 1'
<http://eserver.org/bs/18/>.Come to class Monday prepared to join two other students to write a short (5-6 page) collaborative paper discussing any one article from the issue (not the introduction 'Cyberspace and its Discontents' or the letters to the editor 'Voices from the Collective'), to be turned in at the beginning of class on February 2.
January 31
Read Canter, Laurence and Martha Siegel. 'Green Card Lottery,' posted to 5,200 newsgroups. June 14, 1994.
<http://eserver.org/cyber/spams/grn_card.txt>.
--. 'Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway.' April 5, 1995.
<http://eserver.org/english.server/cyber/make a fortune>.
February 2
Read Dyson, Esther, George Gilder, George Keyworth and Alvin Toffler. 'Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age.' Washington, DC: RAND Corporation, 1994.
February 5
First paper due
February 7
Read selections from Eric Raymond's The Jargon File: An Online Hacker's Dictionary.
'Introduction' -- <http://murrow.journalism.wisc.edu/jargon/jarg_intro.html>
Read several terms from the body of the work. Pay attention to 'hack', 'hacker,' 'cracker' and 'wannabee.' from <http://murrow.journalism.wisc.edu/jargon/jargon.html>
'Appendix A' -- <http://murrow.journalism.wisc.edu/jargon/jarg_appa.html>
'Appendix B' -- <http://murrow.journalism.wisc.edu/jargon/jarg_appb.html>
February 9
Read Cook, William J. 'Theft of Computer Software: A National Security Threat.' FBI Internal Memo: December 1989.
<http://eserver.org/cyber/theft.txt>
Read Denning, Dorothy. 'Concerning Hackers Who Break Into Computer Systems.' Presented at the National Computer Security Conference, 1990. Pittsburgh: English Server, 1991.
<http://www.cpsr.org/dox/program/privacy/crime/ denning.hackers.html>
February 12
Read Doctress Neutopia's 'The Feminization of Cyberspace.' Pittsburgh: English Server, 1994.
<http://rescomp.stanford.edu/binder/feminism.html>
Stone, Allucquere Rosanne. 'Violation and Virtuality.' Pittsburgh: English Server, 1994.
<http://www.actlab.utexas.edu/~sandy/violation-and-virtuality>
February 14
Read Dvorak, John C. 'Trust Congress? Not With This Unbelievable Lair of Slop,' in PC Computing. April 1994: p. 88.
<http://eserver.org/cyber/slop.txt>
February 16
Read Dyson, Esther, George Gilder, George Keyworth and Alvin Toffler. 'Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age.' Washington, DC: RAND Corporation, 1994.
February 19
Read Exon, James and Slade Gorton. 'S.314.IS, 104th Congress-To protect the public from the misuse of the telecommunications network and telecommunications devices and facilities.' Bill, proposed by Senators Exon and Gorton, January 30, 1995.
<http://www.zilker.net/senate/s314.doc>
February 21
Read Friedman, Ted. 'Making Sense of Software: The Need for Software Theory, and SimCity as a Place to Start,' in CyberSociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Ed. Steven G. Jones. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1995.
<http://eserver.org/cyber/friedman/>
February 23
Read Gaffin, Adam. The Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet. Cambridge: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, 1994.
<http://lonezone.com/DUMB/Dummies.html>
February 26
Read Gaffin, Adam. 'Prodigy: Where Is It Going? National Rollout and User Protest Raise Questions About the Future of Online Communications.' Cambridge: Electronic Frontier Foundation, 1992.
<http://www.eff.org/pub/Net_culture/Virtual_community/ prodigy_gaffin.article>
Read Godwin, Michael. 'Prodigy Stumbles as a Forum...Again.' Cambridge: Electronic Frontier Foundation, 1993.
<ftp://ftp.eff.org/>
Read Egelhof, James. 'Why AOL Sucks.'
<http://www.cloud9.net/~jegelhof/>
February 28
Read Coate, John. 'Cyberspace Innkeeping: Building Online Community' San Fransisco: WELL, 1992.
<http://www.sfgate.com/~tex/innkeeping>
Read Gore, Al. 'Information Conduits, Providers, Appliances and Consumers' in Vital Speeches of the Day. Volume 60, no. 8 (February 1, 1994): pp. 237-242.
March 1
Mid-Semester Exam
March 6
Read Gurak, Laura. 'Introduction: The Rhetorical Nature of Electronic Communities,' in The Rhetorical Dynamics of a Community Protest in Cyberspace: The Case of Lotus MarketPlace. Doctoral Dissertation. Rennsalaer Polytechnic Institute, 1994.
March 8
Read Horrigan, Alice. 'On the Internet, You Are What You Write.' Pittsburgh: English Server, 1994.
<url>
March 11
Jameson, Frederic. 'The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,' in Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, North Carolina: Duke, 1991.
March 13
Read Karraker, Roger. 'Highways of the Mind or Toll Roads Between Information Castles?' In Whole Earth Review, Spring (1991): 14 pp.
<gopher://oss.net/00/oss/oss93/karraker.txt>
March 15
Read Kehoe, Brendan. Zen and the Art of Internet: A Beginner's Guide to the Internet. 1st edition. Cleveland: Cleveland State, 1992.
<gopher://trans.csuohio.edu/00/etext/zen-v10>
March 18
Read Krol, Ed. The Whole Internet: User's Guide and Catalog. Sebastapol, California: O'Reilly and Associates, 1994.
March 20
Read MacKinnon, Catherine. 'Vindication and Resistance: A Response to the Carnegie Mellon Study of Pornography in Cyberspace.' in The Georgetown Law Journal. Volume 34: pp. 1959-1995.
March 22
Read Markoff, John. 'The Rise and Swift Fall of Cyber Literacy.' New York Times, March 13, 1994. A4.
April 1
Second paper due
April 3
Meeks, Brock. 'TIME Magazine's Credibility is Hemorrhaging.' CyberWire Dispatch. Pittsburgh: English Server. July 4, 1995. 21 pp.
<ftp://engish.hss.cmu.edu/cyber/>
Read Chapters 1 and 13 from Mulgan, Geoff J. Communication and Control: Networks and the New Economies of Communication. New York: The Guilford Press, 1991.
April 5
Read Negroponte, Nicholas. Being Digital. New York: Knopf, 1995.
April 8
Read Reid, Elizabeth. Electropolis: Communication and Community on Internet Relay Chat. Univ. of Melbourne Honors Thesis, 1991.
<gopher://salve2.salve.edu/00/Techphd/papers/elec>
April 10
Reuters. 'Eavesdropping by Employers is Widespread, Survey Finds.' May 28, 1993.
April 12
Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1993.
<http://www.well.com/www/hlr/vcbook/index.html>
April 15
Rimm, Marty. 'Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway: A Survey of 917,410 Images, Descriptions, Short Stories and Animations Downloaded 8.5 Million Times by Consumers in Over 2000 Cities in Forty Countries, Provinces and Territories.' in The Georgetown Law Journal. Volume 34: 1995. pp. 1834-1934.
<url>
April 17
Roberts, Bert C. 'Information Highways: Delivering and Shaping The Multimedia World of Tomorrow,' in Vital Speeches of the Day. Volume 60, no. 8 (February 1, 1994): pp. 233-236.
April 19
Rochlis, Jon A. and Mark W. Eichin. 'With Microscope and Tweezers: the Worm from MIT's Perspective,' in Communications of the ACM. June 1989. Volume 32, no. 6: pp. 689-697.
<url>
April 22
Rubio, Steven. 'The Internet, The A.G.S.E. Strike and Me' in Bad Subjects. Volume 1 number 4: February (1993): 12 pp.
<http://eserver.org/bs/04/rubio.html>
Rubio, Steven. 'Net Escape,' in Bad Subjects. Volume 3, number 18: February (1995): 18 pp.
<http://eserver.org/bs/18/rubio.html>
April 24
Seabrook, John. 'A Reporter At Large: E-Mail from Bill,' in The New Yorker. January 10 (1994).
<http://eserver.org/cyber/seabrook.txt>
April 26
Spafford, Gene. 'What is USENET?' West Lafayette: Purdue, 1992.
<url>
Von Rospach, Chuq and Gene Spafford. 'A Primer on How to Work With the USENET Community.' West Lafayette: Purdue, 1991.
<ftp://ftp.purdue.edu/>
April 29
Sterling, Bruce. The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier. Urbana: Project Gutenberg, 1994.
<http://eserver.org/cyber/sterling/crackdwn.txt>
May 1
Uncapher, Willard. 'Between Local and Global: Placing the Mediascape in Transnational Cultural Flow' <http://eserver.org/cyber/uncaphr2.txt>
May 3
Final Paper Due