Course overview
Syllabus
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Readings for Week 8

Course Overview

Instructor

Nancy Kaplan, Professor

School of Information Arts and Technologies

102 Charles Royal, 410.837.5319

nkaplan@ubalt.edu

iat.ubalt.edu/kaplan

Description and Objectives

This course surveys important developments, implications, and problems in the development of modern information technologies, emphasizing their relevance to the Internet and other current contexts. Students are expected to become conversant with the technical and intellectual roots of technological development and at the same time to understand important social issues in which that development is implicated. Beginning with the transition from orality to literacy and moving through the emergence of print, the course situates innovation in larger narratives of cultural change and historical process, continuing into the post-Cold-War expansion. Instructors will focus on various relevant themes that may include electronic democracy, the digital divide, globalization and post-nationalism, identity and security issues, and the social implications of "mass" versus "hyper" media.

By the end of this course, students will have a broad understanding of a variety of theoretical and disciplinary approaches to the subject of culture in the age of digital communications technologies. They will have applied a research method to one information technology-supported cultural practice and investigated the intersection between human practices and information technologies' affordances.

Required Texts

Huberman, Bernardo.
The Laws of the Web. MIT Press, 2001.
ISBN: 0-262-08303-5

Jones, Steve, Ed.
Doing Internet Research. Sage, 1999.
ISBN: 0-7619-1595-8

Lesk, Michael.
Practical Digital Libraries. Morgan Kaufmann, 1997.
ISBN: 155860459-6

Rheingold, Howard.
Smart Mobs. Perseus Publishing, 2002.
ISBN: 0-7382-0608-3

Wellman, Barry and Haythornthwaite, Caroline (eds).
The Internet in Everyday Life. Blackwell Publishing, 2002.
ISBN: 0-631-23508-6

Plus handouts and on-line assignments listed on the syllabus

Assignments and Grading Scheme

short paper	20%
research question	05%
research design	15%
research report	50%
participation	10%

Additional Policies

A statement of general academic policies appears on my Web site. That statement is an extension of this document. See http://iat.ubalt.edu/kaplan/policies.htm.

Please also read the University's policies in the Student Handbook.