Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 1 sessions / week, 3 hours / session

Requirements

Students will write three 5 to 7 page papers. Toward the third paper, students will give a presentation exploring the social meaning of an artifact from contemporary computing not covered in our reading - e.g. the iPod™, Xbox®, or Google™ search services.

Grading Policy

Each of the three assignments represents 30% of the subject grade. Students will also be evaluated on class participation, including discussion and in-class writing exercises (10% of grade). Punctual attendance obligatory. There is no final.

Required Texts

Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965. ISBN: 9780262730099.

Edwards, Paul. The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780262550284.

Adam, Alison. Artificial Knowing: Gender and the Thinking Machine. London: Routledge, 1998. ISBN: 9780415129633.

Ceruzzi, Paul E. A History of Modern Computing. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780262532037.

Helmreich, Stefan. Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World. 2nd ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780520208001.

Eglash, Ronald. African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780813526133.

Bear, Greg. Blood Music. New York: iBooks, 2002. ISBN: 9780743444965.