Weekly Syllabus

Weekly Schedule  

Class 1 – August 26, 2020 – Introductions

Introductions, Course Overview, Course, Expectations

What does “Technology and Communications” mean in today’s society? What is a “Critical Network”?

Screening: The Innovation of Loneliness, Digital Kids, Together But Alone, One Simple Fact – Steve Jobs

Class 2, September 2, 2020 – Network Theory 

Required Reading:

Networks – The Science-Spanning Disciplines / Anna Nagurney

Audio of her talk: https://bit.ly/annanagurney

Albert-Laslo Barabasi – Taming Complexity

Assignment: Blog-1

Assignment: Write a post about how networks can take many forms and functions.

Class 3 – September 9, 2020 – The Public Sphere, Blogs, Linked Information

Question: Do you feel as if the Internet and your devices have made you unable to retain information?

Required Viewing:

Tim Berners-Lee: The Next Web of Open Linked Data: http://bit.ly/389kvi

Required Reading:

Bill Joy, “Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us”: http://bit.ly/x9RQ

Fred Vogelstein, The Great Wall of Facebook: http://bit.ly/8jH47Z

Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, http://bit.ly/3GmukC

Anil Dash, “The Web We Lost”, 2012. https://bit.ly/32uKYIR

Discussion: Blog 1

Discussion: A Week without Google and Facebook

Assignment: Spend a week without using any Google and Facebook Products, write down your daily notes, thoughts on what life is like. Is it more difficult? More relaxing? Stressful?

Assignment: Blog 2.

Class 4 – September 16, 2020 – Information Overload and 24/7 Access To Networked Media

Question: Are the tools of digital media impeding or expanding our knowledge?

Required Viewing / Reading:

Jeffrey Rosen: “The Web Means the End of Forgetting”, http://nyti.ms/atnScD

Anna Notaro, The Lo(n)g Revolution: The Blogosphere as an Alternative Public Sphere?

Link: https://bit.ly/notaroanna

Tom Owad, Data Mining 111: Finding Subversives

with Amazon Wishlistshttp://bit.ly/TxZPt

Google Opt Out Policy: video link: http://bit.ly/11wcAc

Case study: Google Search, Facebook, Gmail, Google Adsense,

Assignment: Blog 3

Class 5 – September 23, 2020 – Crowdsourcing and User Generated Content 

Question: How is Crowdsourcing changing methods of labor on the Internet?

READ:

  1. The Rise of Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe, 2006: http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html

2. “The Future of Crowdsourcing: Why the Crowd Is Changing, and What You Can Do About It”, Dustin Haisler, WIRED, March 11, 2014

3. The Blurring Line Between Amateur and Professional, The Atlantic, 2010

  http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/06/the-blurring-line-between-amateur-and-professional/58639/

Class 6 – September 30, 2020 – Wikipedia And Wireless Space

Question: How has wireless technology changed how we think of public vs. private spaces?

Required Reading:

1. ”Social Impacts The Telephone And The Cell Phone Has Had On Society”, Victor Epand, http://bit.ly/1Peq52

2. WiFi-Hog: From Reaction to Realization

Brucker-Cohen, Jonah, Link: https://bit.ly/2DFzM3v

3. Slashdot, “Starbucks Clashes With WiFi Hobbyists Over Airwaves”: http://bit.ly/agNKu

4. “Corruption, Tretchery and Deceit at Wikipedia“, Wolfshead, January 2009.

5. “ Smartphones revolutionize our lives—but at what cost?” BY Yudhijit Bhattacharjee , National Geographic, https://on.natgeo.com/2Hh3e1l

Class 7 – October 7, 2020 –  Midterm Presentations

Students present a project idea that engages critically in the area of technology and communications

Class 8 – October 21, 2020 – The Culture and Tools of Digital Networks / Public DATA

Discussion: Blog 1: Making Data Public

Case study: The Most Boring Places: http://angiewaller.com/the-most-boring-places-in-the-world-2009/

Case study: Sad Topographies: https://www.instagram.com/sadtopographies/?hl=en

Open Data: http://www.data.gov

Content: How does the internet work? Why is it successful?

Case study: E-mail, Blogs, Instant Messaging, Torrents

Assignment: Blog 6

Required Reading:

Arvind Narayanan  “Is Making Public Data “More Public” a Privacy Violation?”  https://bit.ly/3eANYYn and “What Every Developer Needs to Know About “Public” Data and Privacy” : https://bit.ly/2DOEJXM

NEW MEDIA, REWIRED
By Jussi Parikka, 18 October 2006

http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/new-media-rewired

Clay Shirky, Does the Internet Make you Smarter? https://on.wsj.com/30ennv2

Interview with Christophe Bruno: Neural Magazine: https://bit.ly/2CI3Tqg

Class 9 – October 28, 2020  – Designing With Technology – Part 1

Question: What tools allow you to to design interactive content for the web?

Download Processing for free: https://processing.org/download/

P5JS – Create a simple project using p5.js = http://p5js.org

Required Viewing:

1.Hello Processing: https://hello.processing.org/editor/

Assignment: Create a drawing in Processing or P5.js using code examples from the tutorial

Class 10 –  November 4, 2020 – Designing With Technology – Part 2

Question: Why are maps important? What societal information can be learned from them?

Mapping Stories

Fundamental map concepts and types. Survey of journalistic map features

Assignment: Create an interactive social map with Google Maps

Links:  

  1. No street View – Argentina” – https://bit.ly/3jd3VXU
  2. Mapping Stereotypes : https://bit.ly/stereotypesmap
  3. “Reliance on Google Maps Street View Could Create an Urban Digital Divide”, GREGORY SCRUGGS, Next City, https://bit.ly/3905jZu
  4. Google My Maps Tutorial: https://bit.ly/mymapstutorials

Class 11 –  November 11, 2020  – Designing With Technology – Part 3

Question: What is your App idea?

Assignment: Design an App prototype using proto.io

Signup for a free account at this Link: http://proto.io

Post a screenshot and link to your finished app to the blog. In class, show your prototype in action!

Class 12 – November 18, 2020 – Biomedia

Question: How are we becoming interconnected with technology biologically?

READ:

Review of Eugene Thacker’s Biomedia / Nicholas Ruiz III link: https://intertheory.org/thacker-ruiz.htm

Excerpt from Biomedia “DATA Made Flesh”: https://bit.ly/dataflesh

Decoding the Future with Genomics / Juan Enriquez. link: http://bit.ly/1HEKsJ

Assignment: Blog 11

Class 13 – December  2, 2020 –  Final Projects Presentations Part 1

Come up with a creative technological solution to a social problem.  You can use some of the ideas from your App projects and midterm, but you need to significantly take these projects further with user studies – demo your app with people – get feedback, report on the feedback, and change your design t version 2.0 based on user feedback.  Write a 1000 word post on the blog that explains your project and why it is important. Use at least 3 references for your written component. If your project is an App, link to it or if it uses P5.js you should embed it on the blog.

Students present their concepts.

Class 14  – December  9, 2020 – Final Projects Presentations Part 2

Come up with a creative technological solution to a social problem.  You can use some of the ideas from your App projects and midterm, but you need to significantly take these projects further with user studies – demo your app with people – get feedback, report on the feedback, and change your design t version 2.0 based on user feedback.  Write a 1000 word post on the blog that explains your project and why it is important. Use at least 3 references for your written component. If your project is an App, link to it or if it uses P5.js you should embed it on the blog.

Students present their concepts.