Back around to the beginning

As we come into the home stretch of the semester, we circle back around to the beginning, to ask again the questions with which we started, hopefully with some new answers, and hopefully with even more questions. After one of our early discussions, I took some photos of the whiteboard, and here they are.

Everybody Dance Now!

We have been doing experiments with being in class in person and meeting in Second Life. One day, a student was sitting in class but her avatar was dancing in our class space in Second Life. As she stopped her avatar dancing, she muttered, "If I could dance in class, I would!"

I started thinking about this and haven't stopped. Why not dance in class? What would be the differences between dancing in SL and dancing in our classroom? (We are musicians and artists, remember, so this is not as strange to us as it might be to others!) So we have been. Twice now, half the class has been only in SL and the other half in the classroom, with me and one other person in both the virtual and physical class spaces. And we have been dancing! I am going to invite my students to talk about that experience first, and then I will chime in. But in the meantime, consider getting up . . . . putting on some music . . . . and dance!

Pattern Recognition: Reading & Blogging Schedule

Week 6: W Group A blogs

Th 10/8 Reading: Pattern Recognition, William Gibson pages 1-25 (chapters 1-3)

Week 6:

T 10/13 NO CLASS MON SCHEDULE

W Group B blogs

Th 10/15 Reading: Pattern Recognition 26-141; ch. 4-15

Week 7:

W Group C blogs

Th 10/22 Reading: Pattern Recognition pp. 142- 262 ch 16-31

Week 8:

W Group D blogs

Th 10/29 Reading: Pattern Recognition pp. 263-367; ch. 32-end

Changing Conceptions of the Self

Welcome to LMSC-P240: TECHNOLOGY, SELF, & SOCEITY

This course explores the relationship among technology, the self, and society. Students explore the concept of the self as it has evolved over the course of the romantic, modern, and postmodern eras, and as it has been affected by technology. The course explores the realm of technology and science as features of everyday life, and as a means by which subjects reproduce their identities. Students examine the ways in which different technologies (e.g., the telephone, the radio, the television, the Internet, the automobile) shift our conceptualization of the self and reconfigure our relationship to society. Students critically examine the world around them and the ideologies of the self, of society and of technology that determine the ways in which we interact with each other in the world.

In particular, this semester, we'll focus on social media, mobile technology, and virtual worlds. How do these new technologies create new senses of self, subjectivity, relationships, communication, presence, and being?