Week 1
July 7
Introduction; What is History of Information, and Why Examine It?
Note: no reading is required in advance of this class.
July 9
Technological Determinism; Consequences; Alternatives
Required reading:
- Hughes, Thomas P. 1993. “War and Acquired Characteristics.” pp 285-323 in Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Heilbroner, Robert L. 1994. “Do Machines Make History?”, Technology and Culture 8(3):335-345.
Week 2
July 12
Writing Systems and its cultural effects
Required reading:
- McLuhan, Marshall. 1962. “The Galaxy Reconfigured or the Plight of Mass Man in an Individualist Society,” pp 265-279 in The Gutenberg Galaxy: the making of typographic man. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto press.
- Marshack, Alexander. 1999. “The Art and Symbols of Ice-Age Man,” in David Crowley, ed. Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society. Allyn & Bacon. Pp. 5-14
July 14
Second cluster on Writing/ Literacy:
Required reading:
- Havelock, Eric. “The Coming of Literate Communication to Western Culture,” in Eugene R. Kintgen, Barry M. Kroll, Mike Rose, eds. Perspectives on Literacy. Southern Illinois University, 1988. Pp. 127-134.
- Gough, Kathleen. 1968. Implications of literacy in traditional China and India. In Goody, Jack (ed.). Literacy in Traditional Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 69-84.
Additional material:
- Scribner, Silvia and Michael Cole. 1988. “Unpackaging Literacy.” at Social Science Information, 17, 1 (1978)
- Goody, Jack, and Ian Watt. 1963. The Consequences of Literacy. Comparative Studies in Society and History 5(3), 304-345.
*SHORT PAPER DUE 7/19*
July 16
Manuscript Culture, Archives, and the social implications of organized knowledge
Required reading:
- Plato. 1973/360 bce. Phaedrus & the Seventh & Eighth Letters. W. Hamilton, trans. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Read: “Prelude,” pp 21-26, and then “The inferiority of the written to the spoken word” & “Recapitulation and conclusion,” pp. 95-103.
- Eisenstein, Elizabeth. 1983. “Some Features of Print Culture,” pp 42-91 in Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Week 3
July 19
Reference books and the organization of knowledge
Required reading:
- McArthur, Tom. 1986. Ch 12-15, pp. 91-133 in Worlds of Reference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
July 21
Emergence of the public sphere
Required reading:
- Cowan, Brian. 2005. “Inventing the Coffee House” and “Penny Universities,” pp. 79-112 in The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse. New Haven. Yale University Press.
- Darnton, Robert. 2000. “An Early Information Society: News and the Media in Eighteenth-Century Paris.” American Historical Review 105.1.
July 23
MIDTERM Exam (90 mins; starts promptly at 1:10)
Week 4
July 26
History of Journalism
Required reading:
- Schudson, Michael. 2003. “Where News Came From: The History of Journalism,” Ch. 4 in The Sociology of News, Norton. Pp. 64-89.
Politics and propaganda
Required reading:
- Marlin, Randall, 2002. “History of Propaganda,” pp. 62-94 in Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion, Toronto: Broadview Press.
- Watch the first 10-minute segment of “Divide and Conquer,” one of the “Why We Fight” films that Frank Capra made for the Office of War Information in WWII. (If you want more, there are the other segments on this page.) Watch this brief video on the background of these films.
- Watch the first 7-10 minutes of Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will,” and browse the rest to get the flavor of the rallies — it’s pretty repetitive.
July 28
Politics and propaganda continued
- Sun Tzu. nd. “The Use of Spies,” ch. 13 of The Art of War, Lionel Giles, trans.
- Hann, John H. “Cloak and Dagger in Apalachicole Province in Early 1686,” Florida Historical Quarterly 78(1): 74-93.
- Warner, Michael. 2006. “The Divine Skein: Sun Tzu on Intelligence.” Intelligence and National Security 21(4): 483-492.
July 30th
Advertising
Required Reading:
Week 5
August 2
Broadcast
Required reading:
- Czitrom, Daniel J. 1982. “The Ethereal Hearth: American Radio from Wireless through Broadcasting, 1892-1940” in Media and the American Mind. University of North Carolina Press. Pp. 60-88.
August 4
Narrowcast: telegraph & telephone
Required reading:
- Fischer, Claude S. 1992. Chapter 2 “The Telephone in America.” The Social History of the Telephone to 1940. University of California Press. Berkeley. pp 33-59
Additional material: TBA
August 6
Photography: technologies of the image
Required reading:
- Newhall, Beaumont. 1964. “Prints from Paper,” “Portraits for the Million,” and “The Faithful Witness,” pp. 31-58, 67-82 in The History of Photography, From 1839 to the Present Day. New York: Museum of Modern Art.
Additional material:
- Fradkin, Philip L. 2005. “The Culture of Disasters” pp 263-288 in The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906. University of California Press: Berkeley.
Week 6
August 9
Advent of the computer
Required reading:
- Campbell-Kelly, Martin & William Aspray. 1996. “‘Babbage’s Dream Comes True,” (pp. 53-104) in Martin Campbell-Kelly & William Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine. New York: Basic Books.
- Menabrea, L.F. 1842. Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage, trans. Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace. [read the final paragraph before the “Notes by the translator. It begins “Now, admitting that such an engine …” and ends “… such an undertaking.”]
- Berners-Lee, Tim. 2000. Chapters 1-3, pp. 1-34 in Weaving the Web. New York City: HarperCollins.
Additional material:
- Babbage, Charles. 1835. “Registering Operations” and “On the Division of Mental Labour,” chapters 8 & 20 in On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures.
- Watch: Englebart, Douglas. 1968. “Doug Englebart 1968 Demo.” On MouseSite.
August 11
Valedictory
August 13
Final Exam