From the first attempts at pressing symbols into clay, to the latest software available on the Net, our efforts to communicate, share our culture, and drive social agendas have depended on the tools we've developed for getting our ideas to others. However, our commonplace notions of communication and media regularly overlook the role of the material technologies that are so crucial to them. Yet our beliefs as to how and why we communicate have shaped the technologies we design; in turn, those technologies have shaped our efforts to communicate, and the consequences of those efforts. This course will consider the technologies of media (including printing, photography, film, telegraph, telephone, radio, television, and computer networks) as an opportunity to think about the intersection of technology and its social context.

The most important assignment is to complete all of the reading assigned. I cannot stress this enough; comprehension of the arguments is crucial to your success in this course. Attendance is also required, and MAY be taken at my discretion. There will be three written assignments (3-4 pages each, 20% of grade each) during the semester that will ask you to deal with specific questions dealt with in the course, using arguments from the readings as intellectual resources.. The final project (40% of grade) will be a creative project that asks you to analyze a particular communication medium for its relationship between material technology and cultural practice -- using that technology to do so. Further explanation of all these assignments will be provided in class.

One book is required for this course; it is available for purchase at the Cornell Bookstore, and is on reserve at Uris Library:

Paul Starr, The Creation of the Media (2004)

The remainder of the readings are available online on the web and through e-reserve.

JAN 27: media technology and its relationship to society

Brian Winston, "How Are Media Born and Developed?"
Roger Silverstone, Television and Everyday Lifepart of Ch 4 (read only 78-88, 97-103)

Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, Ch 3

Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book, part of Ch 2 (58-108, 160-186)
     [[ available as an e-book through Cornell library catalog ]]

Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading, Ch 9
Clifford Lynch, "The Battle to Define the Future of the Book in the Digital World"

STARR: intro [1-22]
Weibe Bijker, "Social Construction of Technology"

STARR: Ch 2 [47-82]
Jürgen Habermas, "The Public Sphere"

STARR: part of Ch 3 [83-94], Ch 4 [113-152]

STARR: part of Ch 5 [153-177], part of Ch 6 [191-222]
Howard Rheingold, "Look Who's Talking" Wired (Jan 1999)

W. Bernard Carlson, "Artifacts and Frames of Meaning: Thomas A. Edison, His Managers, and the Cultural Construction of Motion Pictures" in Bijker and Law, eds., Shaping Technology / Building Society
     [[ available as an e-book through Cornell library catalog ]]
Jane Gaines, Contested Culture, Ch 2

STARR: Ch 9 [295-326]
David Robinson, From Peep Show to Palace, Ch 1

and, explore ONE of the following websites:
      Chronophotographical Projections
      Origin of American Animation
      Edison Motion Pictures

Susan Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, Ch 6
STARR: Ch 10 [327-346], part of Ch 11 [347-363]

William Boddy "The Beginnings of American Television"
Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form, Ch 1

Janet Abbate, Inventing the Internet, Ch 1
STARR: Ch 12 [385-402]

Langdon Winner, "Do Artifacts Have Politics?"

Richard Dyer, White, excerpt from Ch 3 (82-103)
John Caldwell, Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Television, Ch 3
     [[ available as e-book through Cornell library catalog ]]

spring break

MAR 29: technologies of distribution

W. Russell Neuman, Lee McKnight, and Richard Solomon, The Gordian Knot, Ch 2
National Research Council, The Digital Dilemma, Appendix C

Lary May, Screening Out the Past, Ch 6
Lynn Spigel, "Media Homes: Then and Now"
Robin Baker, J. Ron Inglis, and Julia Voss, "At a Cinema Near You: Building Design"

Donald Norman, Things That Make Us Smart, Ch 3

Pablo Boczkowski, ""Mimetic Originality: The New York Times on the Web's Technology Section Tom Coates, "(Weblogs and) The Mass Amateurisation of (Nearly) Everything..." (September 03, 2003)

no longer required:
Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
David Levy, "Fixed or Fluid? Document Stability and New Media"
Nicholson Baker, Double Fold, Ch 6 and 7

Lev Manovich, "The Paradox of Digital Photography"
William J. Mitchell, "How to Do Things with Pictures"
Farhad Manjoo, "A Picture Is No Longer Worth a Thousand Words" Salon (April 22, 2004)

APR 19: case: animation and special effects

Mark Langer, "The Disney-Fleischer Dilemma: Product Differentiation and Technological Innovation"
Norman Klein, Seven Minutes, Ch 7 (75-80)
Stephen Prince, "True Lies: Perceptual Realism, Digital Images, and Film Theory"

Reese Jenkins, "Technology and the Market: George Eastman and the Origins of Mass Amateur Photography"
Steve Woolgar, "Configuring the User: The Case of Usability Trials"

no longer required:
Claude Fischer, "Touch Someone: The Telephone Industry Discovers Sociability"Hoffmann
Jeannette Hoffmann, "Writers, Texts, and Writing Acts: Gendered User Images in Word Processing Software"

Steven Johnson, Interface Culture, Ch 2
Lucas Introna and Helen Nissenbaum, "Defining the Web: The Politics of Search Engines"

Henry Jenkins, "Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Digital Cinema, Media Convergence, and Participatory Culture"
Rebecca Blood,"How Blogging Software Reshapes the Online Community"
Wikipedia, "Wikipedia"

National Research Council, The Digital Dilemma, Ch 1 (23-75)
Peter Biddle, Paul England, Marcus Peinado, and Bryan Willman, "The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution"
Jeff Howe, "The Shadow Internet", Wired (Jan 2005)

Lawrence Lessig, Code, and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Ch 5 (43-60)
Mark Stefik, "Trusted Systems" Scientific American (March 1997)
Pamela Samuelson, "DRM {and, or, vs.} the Law"

final projects due Wed May 18th, 12noon