NCSU Communication, Rhetoric and Digital Media (CRDM) program

COM701::History and Theory of Communication Technology
Instructor: Dr. Adriana de Souza e Silva

 

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There will be weekly readings. This is a reading-intensive course in which you will be asked to deal with material that is often quite challenging in its language and theoretical positions. You should expect to read about 60-100 pages a week, and write a brief summary/comment on each text you read. You are excused from writing your comment if you are presenting to the class. You are responsible for not only reading all the material assigned to you, but engaging with it before class in a way that prepares you to participate in class discussion. In order to do this, you will need to take careful reading notes and review your notes before each class. The readings shall be used not only for class discussion, but also to support your arguments on the class discussions, presentations, and final paper.

All texts are available online as PDF documents, through this Web site and the NCSU library online reserves. A few new ones may will be also available on the Web. It is recommended that students download/print all texts at the beggining of the semester to avoid not being prepared for class due to problems in Internet connectivity.

Note: All students must regurlary check e-mails, as well as the class Website, for messages and readings from this course.

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Required Readings:

Aarseth, E. (2003). Nonlinearity and literary theory. In N. Wardrip-Fruin & N. Montfort (Eds.), The new media reader (pp. 761-780). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Originally published at: G. Landow (1994). Hyper/Text/Theory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Adorno, T., & Horkheimer, M. (2006). The culture industry: Enlightenment as mass deception [part 1] [part 2]. In M. G. Durham & D. M. Kellner (Eds.), Media and cultural studies: Keyworks (pp. 71-101). Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Baudrillard, J. (2003). Requiem for the media. In N. Wardrip-Fruin & N. Montfort (Eds.), The new media reader (pp. 277-288). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Benjamin, W. (2006). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction [part 1] [part 2]. In M. G. Durham & D. M. Kellner (Eds.), Media and cultural studies: Keyworks (pp. 48-70). Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Bolter, J. D. (2003). Theory and practice of new media studies. In G. Liestøl, A. Morrison & T. Rasmussen (Eds.), Digital media revisited: Theoretical and conceptual innovations in digital domains (pp. 15-33). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Borges, J. L. (2003). The garden of the forking paths. In N. Wardrip-Fruin & N. Montfort (Eds.), The new media reader (pp. 29-34). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Also available online at: www.cybergrain.com/remediality/borges.pdf

Briggs, A. & Burke, P. (2002). The print revolution in context. In A social history of the media: From Gutenberg to the Internet (pp. 15-73). Cambridge, UK: Polity; Malden, MA: Blackwell. [BOOK ON PRINT RESERVES]

Briggs, A. & Burke, P. (2002). Processes and patterns [part 1] [part 2]. In A social history of the media: From Gutenberg to the Internet (pp. 121-187). Cambridge, UK: Polity; Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Briggs, A. & Burke, P. (2002). Information, Education, Entertainment. In A social history of the media: From Gutenberg to the Internet (pp. 216-265). Cambridge, UK: Polity; Malden, MA: Blackwell. [BOOK ON PRINT RESERVES]

Bush, V. (2003). As we may think. In N. Wardrip-Fruin & N. Montfort (Eds.), The new media reader (pp. 35-48). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Also available online at: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush

Castells, M. (2000). The space of flows [part 1] [part 2]. In The rise of the network society (pp. 407– 459). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

De Souza e Silva, A. (2006). From cyber to hybrid: Mobile technologies as interfaces of hybrid spaces. Space and Culture, 9 (3), 261-278.

De Souza e Silva, A. (2004). Defining the virtual: simulation, possibility, potentiality, non-place. In From multiuser environments as (virtual) spaces to (hybrid) spaces as multiuser environments: Nomadic technology devices and hybrid communication places (pp. 48-80). Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Deleuze, G. (1993). Incompossiblity, individuality, liberty. In The fold: Leibniz and the baroque (pp. 67 -83). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Dourish, P., & Bell, G. (2007). The infrastructure of experience and the experience of infrastructure: meaning and structure in everyday encounters with space. Environment & Planning B: Planning & Design, 34 (3), 414-430.

Engelbart, D. (2003). From augmenting the human intellect. In N. Wardrip-Fruin & N. Montfort (Eds.), The new media reader (pp. 93-108). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Also available online at http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/engelbart/full_62_paper_augm_hum_int.html

Enzensberger, H. M. (1970). Constituents of a theory of the media. New Left Review (64) 13-36. Also available in N. Wardrip-Fruin & N. Montfort (Eds.), The new media reader (pp. 259-275). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Farley, T. (2005). Mobile telephone history. Telektronikk, 3 (4), 22-34.

Fagerjord, A. (2003). Rhetorical convergence: Studying web media [part 1] [part 2]. In G. Liestøl, A. Morrison & T. Rasmussen (Eds.), Digital media revisited: Theoretical and conceptual innovations in digital domains (pp. 293-326). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Garvey, (2003). Scissoring and scrapbooks: Nineteenth-Century reading, remaking, and recirculating. In L. Gitelman & G. B. Pingree (Eds.), New media: 1740-1915 (pp. 207-227). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Hardey, M. (2007). The city in the age of web 2.0: A new synergistic relationship between place and people. Information, Communication & Society, 10 (6), 867-884.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Interactive audiences? The "collective intelligence" of media fans". In Fans, bloggers, and gamers: Exploring participatory culture (pp. 134-151). New York: New York University Press.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Pop cosmopolitanism: Mapping cultural flows in an age of media convergence. In Fans, bloggers, and gamers: Exploring participatory culture (pp. 152-172). New York: New York University Press.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Blog this! In Fans, bloggers, and gamers: Exploring participatory culture (pp. 178-181). New York: New York University Press.

Jenkins, H. (2006). The war between effects and meanings: Rethinking the video game violence debate. In Fans, bloggers, and gamers: Exploring participatory culture (pp. 208-221). New York: New York University Press.

Jensen, O. B. (2006). Facework, flow and the city: Simmel, Goffman and mobility in the contemporary city. Mobilities, 1(2): 143-165.

Hayles, N. K. (2005). Translating media [part 1] [part 2]. In My mother was a computer: Digital subjects and literary texts (pp. 89-116). Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Hayles, N. K. (2002). Material metaphors, technotexts, and media-specific analysis. In Writing machines. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Hayles, N. K. (1999). The condition of virtuality. In P. Lunenfeld (Ed.). The digital dialectic: New essays on new media (pp. 68-94). Cambridge: MIT Press.

Hobart, M., & Schiffman, Z. (1988). Printing and the rupture of classification. In Information ages: Literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution (pp. 87-111). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Hobart, M., & Schiffman, Z. (1988). The realm of pure technique [part 1] [part 2]. In Information ages: Literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution (pp. 201-234). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Kellerman, A. (2006). Technologies. In Personal mobilities (pp. 72-108). London, New York: Routledge.

Kellerman, A. (2006). Places. In Personal mobilities (pp. 128-144). London, New York: Routledge.

Lévy, P. (1988). The nature of virtualization. In Becoming virtual: Reality in the digital age (pp. 23-34). New York: Plenum Trade.

Liestøl, E. (2003). Computer games and the ludic structure of interpretation [part 1] [part 2]. In G. Liestøl, A. Morrison & T. Rasmussen (Eds.), Digital media revisited: Theoretical and conceptual innovations in digital domains (pp. 327-358). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Lupton, D. (2007). The embodied computer/user. In D. Bell & B. M. Kennedy (Eds.), The cybercultures reader (pp. 422-432). London, New York: Routledge. Also available online at: http://bod.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/1/3-4/97

Manguel, A. (1996). The shape of the book [part 1] [part 2]. In A history of reading (pp. 125-148). New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Viking.

Mann, S., Nolan, J., & Wellman, B. (2003). Sousveillance: Inventing and using wearable
computing devices for data collection in surveillance environments. Surveillance & Society, 1 (3) 331-355.

Manovich, L. (2001). What's new media? In The language of new media (pp. 18-61). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. [THIS CHAPTER IS ON PRINT RESERVES]

Manovich, L. (2001). The interface. In The language of new media (pp. 62-93). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. [THIS CHAPTER IS ON PRINT RESERVES]

Manovich, L. (2001). The forms: The database. In The language of new media (pp. 212-243). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. [THIS CHAPTER IS ON PRINT RESERVES]

Manovich, L. (2001). The forms: Navigable space [part 1] [part 2]. In The language of new media (pp. 244-285). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Marvin, C. (1988). Dazzling the multitude [part 1] [part 2]. In When old technologies were new: Thinking about electric communication in the late nineteenth century (pp. 152-190). New York: Oxford University Press.

McLuhan, M. (2003). Two selections by Marshall McLuhan: The galaxy reconfigured or the plight of mass man in an individualist society, 1969 (from The Gutenberg galaxy) AND The medium is the message, 1964 (from Understanding Media). In N. Wardrip-Fruin & N. Montfort (Eds.), The new media reader (pp. 193-210). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Meyrowitz, J. (2005). The rise of glocality: New senses of place and identity in the global village. In K. Nyíri (Ed.), A sense of place: The global and the local in mobile communication (pp. 21-30). Vienna: Passagen Verlag. Also available online at: Proceedings of the Conference on the Global and the Local in Mobile Communication: Places, Images, People, Connections, 1-12. Budapest, June 10-12. Retrieved March 07, 2008, from http://www.fil.hu/mobil/2004/meyrowitz_webversion.doc

Nelson, T. (1965). A file structure for the complex, the changing, and the indeterminate. In L. Winner (Ed.), Association for Computing Machinery: Proceedigs of the 20th National Conference, 84-100. Also available in N. Wardrip-Fruin & N. Montfort (Eds.), The new media reader (pp. 259-275). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Nielsen, S. E., Smith, J. H., & Tosca, S. P. (2008). History [part 1] [part 2]. In Understading video games: The essential introduction (pp. 45-96). New York: Routledge.

Poster, M. (2001). Theorizing the virtual. In What's the matter with the Internet? (pp. 129-147). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Schivelbusch, W. (1986). Panoramic travel. In The railway journey: The industrialization of time and space in the 19th century (pp. 52-69). Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press.

Schivelbusch, W. (1986). The compartment. In The railway journey: The industrialization of time and space in the 19th century (pp. 70-88). Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press.

Sheller, M., & Urry, J. (2006). The new mobilities paradigm. Environment and Planning A, 38 (2), 207-226.

Stubbs, K. (2003). Telegraphy's corporeal fictions. In L. Gitelman & G. B. Pingree (Eds.), New media: 1740-1915 (pp. 91-112). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Turkle, S. (2003) Video games and computer holding power. In N. Wardrip-Fruin & N. Montfort (Eds.), The new media reader (pp. 499-513). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Also available online at: http://www.newmediareader.com/book_samples/nmr-34-turkle.pdf

Urichio, W. (2003). Historicizing media in transition. In D. Thorburn & H. Jenkins (Eds.), Rethinking media change: The aesthetics of transition (pp. 23-28). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Wiener, N. (1954). Men, machines, and the world about. In N. Wardrip-Fruin & N. Montfort (Eds.), The new media reader (pp. 259-275). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Also available online at: http://mavo.nu/?q=node/16

Wood, D., & Graham, S. (2005) Permeable boundaries in the software-sorted society: Surveillance and the differentiation of mobility. In M. Sheller and J. Urry (Eds.), Mobile Technologies of the City (pp. 177-191). London: Routledge.