Progress Report (or, a Report on Tangential Knowledge Production)

The first semester of this course, which is only one credit (we meet for 50 minutes a week), has covered an astonishing and impressive array of topics, from which we are beginning to articulate the lines of critique that our second semester (a full three credit class) will pursue.

Here is what our class has read, on the iPad, as a way to think about iPads and the contemporary condition of e-reading:

We began by reading Robert Darnton's The Case For Books: Past, Present, Future. With this book we have discussed the quest for better (or wider) access to library holdings, and the differences between internet knowledge and book knowledge.

Then we took a detour into three works of short fiction:

Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of Babel"
Barry Lopez, "The Mappist"
Bruno Shulz, "The Street of Crocodiles"

With these stories, we thought about how humans record, archive, or map knowledge, and we discussed the limits and possibilities of these various acts. We also questioned the figurative language of place and environment in these works, and we wondered about a potential analogy in the digital realm: does the internet function as an alien medium—like high altitude air, or deep sea—where one can become overwhelmed by information currents, data flows, and visual riptides?

Next, our class will read & discuss N. Katherine Hayles's article "Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes."

Meanwhile, the students have each selected one of the following titles, and they will present reviews of these texts during the final weeks of this semester:

Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Henry Jenkins

The Dumbest Generation, Mark Bauerlein

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, Neil Postman

The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch

The Shallows, Nicholas Carr

The Book is Dead (Long Live the Book), Sherman Young

From Gutenberg to Google: Electronic Representations of Literary Texts, Peter L. Shillingsburg

Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print, Jay David Bolter

Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, Janet Murray

The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information, Richard Lanham

Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary, N. Katherine Hayles

Hamlet's Blackberry: Hamlet's BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, William Powers

The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control, Ted Striphas

Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age, Douglas Rushkoff