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Introduction
This course will focus on computers, the Internet and World Wide Web and the convergence of computerized technologies with other electronic media . We will examine the hardware and software systems which govern the use and development of computers. We will study the historical and critical discourses which are needed to place computers into the context of late twentieth century technological innovation. The common thread of the course will be to study the impact of digitization: numbers, words, pictures and sound all accessible to manipulation from the simple process of digitization. The course will also examine the rich direction taken by research into interactive forms of communication. For example, how have archives and museums changed as a result of digitization? What has happened to language, to the writing process, to information in general? How has hypertext altered notions of reading and writing? What has happened to librairies as they have transformed themselves into virtual or electronic institutions? What are the effects of having so much knowledge circulating in so many different ways through so many different environments?
The course will also teach students how to work with computers through a hands-on experience. The practical side of the course will take place in the Faculty of Arts Computer Laboratory. There, students will learn the fundamentals of computer operation, how to make best use of the plethora of information which is available through the Internet and how to access the various databases which are available through the World Wide Web.
Concurrently, students will study the history of computers, the many different effects which computers have had on the cultural context in which we live, the changes which computerized technologies have initiated in every area of our lives.
One of the central premises of the course is that students need to feel empowered in their use of new technologies in order to be able to critically evaluate their impact. One of the ways in which we will approach this problem is by using the internet to set up a virtual classroom thus self-reflexively examining our objects of study. This will be more than just an e-mail network. It will be the cyberspatial equivalent to a classroom where students will be able to talk about their work, their research and their goals in real time. We will accomplish this through the use of a telnet based MOO. (Moo's are extensions of e-mail into real time. They permit you to send messages and receives responses from people who are hooked up to the network at the same time.) In effect, students in the class will practice and then create the on-ramps which they need to access the information highway at the same time as learn how to question and criticize its presumptions and pretentions.
All materials in the course will be available on-line. Students will be encouraged to develop and extend those materials by making their own research available to the class on-line. All assignments in the course will sent to the instructor (s) electronically and students will receive comments in a similar fashion.
BOOKS
Critical Approaches to Culture, Communications + Hypermedia is a set of resources on the World Wide Web developed by Ron Burnett in Vancouver, Canada. All rights reserved. ©Ron Burnett 2008