| Instructor: Diane Davis | Office Hours: TTH 2-3:15 and by appt |
| Office: PAR 19; Phone: 471.8735 | Weekly Schedule |
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This interdisciplinary, substantial writing component
(SWC) course is devoted to exploring the human dimensions of information technology
and to examining the impacts that information technologies have on society.
This semester, we will be especially interested in the social and political
implications of what is currently being called the "mobile Net,"
a convergence of the information processing-power of networked PCs with the
social networking capacities granted by mobile (wireless) telecommunications
technologies. Mobile communication devices, peer to peer methods, and a computation-pervaded
environment are making it possible for groups of people to organize collective
actions on a scale never before possible--these groups are called flash or
smart mobs. Both to get us going on this investigation and to spark discussion,
critique, and ideas for potential research projects, we'll read together Howard
Rheingold's Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution.
In addition to several informal assignments, including both in-class and online participation, there will be 3 major assignments in this course:
In order to prepare you to accomplish these tasks, we will devote a good deal of in-class time to hands-on experience with HTML authoring tools and other software packages devoted to the manipulation of graphic and perhaps audio files. No previous Web authoring experience necessary.