fredag 20 november 2009

Next week's readings

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The readings for next week are a mixed bag of texts as the lecture and the following seminar will tackle some different "large" questions. The topic is "critique" and as we all know by now, there is very little critique or thought about the possible negative impact of Internet/social media in Benkler's book so the (relatively short chapter in the) book has been supplemented by various other (short) papers.

The readings can be divided into four parts:

1) What is the impact of Internet/social media on our relationships with other people and on our (mental) health. In the words of one of the texts; is, or does Internet lead to a "sad, lonely world" or is it instead a "platform for human connection"? (Or is it both?)

a) Harmon (1998), "Researchers find sad, lonely world in cyberspace" (New York Times) - 4 pages
b) Benkler (2006), "Social ties: Networking together" (chapter 10) - 22 pages


2) What is the impact of Internet/social media on our way of thinking? Is Google making us stoopid? Are we both more well-informed about current events, but also less able to think through difficult thoughts?

a) Postman (1990), "Informing ourselves to death" (transcribed speech given at at computer conference) - 8 pages
[this paper later became a chapter in Neil Postman's book "Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology (1993)]
b) Carr (2008), "Is Google making us stupid?" (Atlantic Monthly) - 7 pages
[this topic will be expanded in Nick Carr's book "The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains" which will be published in June 2010]


3) What is the impact of Internet/social media on our social behavior, will people become more inhibited if commercial or governmental surveillance and data mining increases? Will participation and making your voice heard (i.e. democracy) decrease?

a) Lundblad (2004), "Privacy in a noise society" [pdf file] (presented at the workshop "WHOLES: A multiple view of inidividual privacy in a networked world") - 4 dense pages
[this topic is presumably a part on Lundblad's Ph.D. thesis, "Law in a noise society" [pdf file]].


4) Is the Internet/social media sustainable in the long run? Will we face global problems of energy and resource depletion during the 21st century? Or will climate change force us to pollute less, use less (fossil) energy and radically rethink our habits and our use of technology? These short texts point out some radically different possible futures for the Internet.

a) Bardi (2009), "The spike and the peak" [pdf file] (posted to The Oil Drum, an online discussion forum) - 4 pages
b) Anderson (2009), "Peak oil primer" (printer-friendly version) (posted to the Energy Bulletin website) - 8 pages
c) Greer (2009), "The end of the information age" (printer-friendly version) and "The economics of decline" (printer-friendly version) (posted to the Energy Bulltin website) - 3 + 3 pages
[these topics are presumably a part of Greer's 2008 book "The Long descent: A user's guide to the end of the industrial age"]


Greer makes a passing remark to the short story "The machine stops" (1909) by the author E. M. Forster ("A room with a view", "Howards end"). It is a haunting science fiction story of a point in the future when humanity has become totally dependent on our technologies ("Internet" and "video conferencing"?). You might consider reading this short story (fiction) when you get tired of reading all the non-fiction texts listed above.

Next week's lecture and the last individual seminar assignment (number 5) will build on the texts above.

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