Syllabus

Note: Required readings not linked to in this page will be in the reader.

WEEK 1

22 Jan: Introduction: Why “History of Information?”

Slides
Geoff’s slides
Paul’s slides

24 Jan: The “Age of Information”

Slides
Paul’s slides

WEEK 2

29 Jan: Technological Determinism

Required Reading

  • McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. Understanding Media. New York: McGraw-Hill.
    read “Preface to Third Printing” pp. v-x; & “Introduction,” & “The Medium is the Message” pp. 3-21.
  • Williams, Raymond. 1974. Television and Cultural Form.New York: Schocken Books.
    read Chapter 1, introduction and sections a & b, pp. 9-19; & Chapter 5, section c, pp. 126-128.

Slides
Paul’s slides

31 Jan: First Technologies: Writing

 

Required Readings

  • 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.
  • Robinson, Andrew. 1999. “The Origins of Writing.” In David Crowley, ed. Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society. Allyn & Bacon. Pp. 36-42.
  • Drucker, Johanna, 1999, “The Alphabet,” in David Crowley, ed. Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society. Allyn & Bacon. Pp. 46-55.

Slides
Geoff’s slides

WEEK 3

5 Feb: Cultural Effects of Writing

Required Readings

  • Havelock, Eric, “The Greek Legacy,” in David Crowley, ed. Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society. Allyn & Bacon. Pp. 55-62.
  • Gough, Kathleen. 1968. Implications of literacy in traditional China and India. In Goody, Jack (ed.). Literacy in Traditional Societies.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 44-56.

Additional Materials

Slides
Geoff’s slides (pdf) (ppt)

7 Feb: Manuscript Culture

Required Readings

  • Plato. 1973 [c. 360 bce]. Phaedrus & the Seventh & Eighth Letters. W. Hamilton, trans. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
    read “Prelude,” pp. 21-26; & “The Inferiority of the Written to the Spoken Word” & “Recapitulation and Conclusion” pp. 95-103.
  • Trithemius, Johannes. 1974 [1492]. In Praise of Scribes. R. Behrendt, ed. Lawrence, KA: Coronado Press.
    read Chapters I-III, V-VII, XIV.

Note: We are now going back to “primary texts,” texts that discuss the changes we are interested in as they happened. As you read these texts, one almost 2500 years old, the other more than 500 years old, ask yourself whether these have anything to tell us about information in the modern world. Be prepared to discuss your reactions in class. (The Trithemius is a “parallel text” with Latin facing English. Only those fluent in Latin need read the Latin pages.)

Slides
Paul’s slides

WEEK 4

12 Feb: Print ‘Revolution’

Required Readings

  • Knox, Vicesimus. 1817, Essays, Moral and Literary (seventeenth edition). London.
    read “Introductory Remarks on the Art of Printing” pp. 76-81; “On the Circumstances which Led to the Discovery of the Art of Printing, with Miscellaneous Remarks on It” pp. 81-87;  & “On the Moral, Political, and Religious Effects of Printing, with Concluding remarks” pp 87-96.
  •  “How Luther Went Viral”, Economist, 2011, Dec 17.

Additional Materials

  • Listen to Economist discussion at the same link.

Slides
Paul’s slides

14 Feb: Scientific ‘Revolution’

Required Reading

Sprat divides his history into three parts. The first gives the background of the group which formed the Royal Society. The second describes what they did that earned them the title “Royal Society” (in 1662). And the third describes what they did between 1662 and the publication of Sprat’s book in 1667. You are asked to read from the second part, so

Start at page 60–page numbers are given in bold within square brackets, so scroll down until you see [60] then look for the paragraph that begins, “I come now to the Second Period of my Narration…” and read to p. 79, “The Royal Society will become Immortal.”

Note: The Royal Society was founded in England in 1660. It still exists today-2010 was its 350th anniversary– and claims to be the world’s oldest scientific society. Thomas Sprat (1635-1713), the author of the work you have to read, joined the Society in 1663 and was asked to write the Society’s history. In this book, then, we have a contemporary, insider’s account of the founding of a very influential society, one that people argue was at the center of the “scientific revolution.” Because it was written in the seventeenth century, however, the text is a challenge. But it is manageable and even rewarding with patience. Take it slowly–the section you have to read, pages 60-79, is not very long. If you keep going, what is at first confusing may become clear (or irrelevant). Mark up passages that don’t make sense (as well as those that interest you) to discuss in class, but keep on reading. As you read, ask yourself how much this does or does not resemble what we think of as modern science.

If you go to Early English Books Online, you will be able to see the pages as they appeared in the original book.

Additional Material:

Slides
Paul’s slides

WEEK 5

19 Feb: Emergence of the Public Sphere

Required Readings

Geoff’s slides

21 Feb: Reference Books and the Organization of Knowledge

Required Readings

  • McArthur, Tom. 1986.  Worlds of Reference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ch. 13, “Reference and Revolution” and Ch. 14, “Thematic Lexicography,” pp. 128-138 in the reader.
  • Book of plates from Diderot’s Encylopedie at archive.org. Slide hand icon at bottom to browse.
  • For fun: Nunberg, Geoffrey. 2013. “Noted.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. 7.

Geoff’s slides

WEEK 6

26 Feb: Rise of Literacy and Standard Language

Required Readings

  • McArthur, Tom. 1986.  Worlds of Reference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chs. 12, “The Legislative Urge” and 14, “Thematic Lexicography,” pp. 121-127 and 139-143 in the reader.
  • Johnson, Samuel. 1755. “Preface” to the Dictionary.
  • Johnson, Samuel. 1785 (1755). A Dictionary of the English Language. Slide hand icon at the bottom and page forward/back until you come to the definition of dictionary.)

Geoff’s slides

28 Feb: Unnoticed Revolutions? Time and Money

Required Readings

Paul’s slides

WEEK 7

5 Mar: Communications “Revolution”

Required Readings

Additional Materials

  • John, Richard. 2010. Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
  • Fischer, Claude S. 1992. Chapter 2, The Telephone in AmericaThe Social History of the Telephone to 1940. University of California Press. Berkeley. Pp 33-59.

Paul’s slides

7 Mar: The Telegraph in China

Guest Lecture: Tom Mullaney, Stanford University

WEEK 8

12 Mar: Literacy and the Nineteenth Century Public Sphere

Required Readings

  • Graff, Harvey.1987.  “Literacy Learning in the Nineteenth Century”  from The Legacies of Literacy: Continuities and Contradictions in Western Culture and Society. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, pp.260-264.
  • Baron, Dennis. 1994. “The Literacy Complex.” (Web version of 1994 article; if you find it difficult to read the font, try installing the plug-in at readability.com)

Additional Materials

  • Henkin, David. 2006. “Becoming Postal.” Ch. 1 of The Postal Age, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pp.15-41.
  • Stone, Lawrence. 1969. “Literacy and Education in England 1640-1900.” Past & Present 42: 69-139 (necessary to read only to p. 102).
  • Henkin, Ch.6  “Mass Mailings” Pp. 148-171.

Geoff’s slides

14 Mar: Technologies of the Image

Required Readings

  • Newhall, Beaumont. 1964. “Prints from Paper,” “Portraits for the Million,” and “The Faithful Witness,” pp. 32-57 in The History of Photography, From 1839 to the Present Day. New York: Museum of Modern Art.
  • Fineman, Mia. 2012 “Introduction” pp. 3-43 of Faking it. Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Additional Materials

  • M[arcus] A[urelius] Root. 1864. “Uses of the Heliographic Art,” Pp. 26-31 of The Camera and the Pencil. Lippincott, Philadelphia.
  • Sontag, Susan. 1977. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus & and Giroux. Chapter 1, “In Plato’s Cave.” The photographs discussed in the chapter can be found here:

Geoff’s slides

WEEK 9

19 Mar: Politics and Propaganda

Required Readings

  • Schudson, Michael. 2003. “Where News Came From: The History of Journalism,” Ch. 4 in The Sociology of News, Norton. Pp. 64-89.
  • Marlin, Randall, 2002. “History of Propaganda,” pp. 62-94 in Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion, Toronto: Broadview Press.

Additional Materials

  • 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.

Geoff’s slides

21 Mar: Midterm

WEEK 10

Spring Break. No Class.

WEEK 11

2 Apr: Information as Property

Required Readings

Slides
Paul’s slides

4 Apr: 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.

Geoff’s slides

WEEK 12

9 Apr: Computer “Revolution”

Required Readings

Additional Materials

  • Babbage, Charles. 1832. “Registering Operations” and “On the Division of Mental Labour,” chapters 8 & 19 in On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. [Google Books edition]
  • Watch: Englebart, Douglas. 1968. “Doug Englebart 1968 Demo.” On MouseSite.

Slides
Paul’s slides

11 Apr: Visualizing Information

Required Readings

  • Hagy, Jessica. (2010). Visualization: Indexed. In Steele & Iliinsky (Eds.), Beautiful Visualization: Looking at Data through the Eyes of Experts (pp. 353–367).
  • Card, Mackinlay, & Shneiderman. (1999). Information Visualization. In Card, Mackinlay, & Shneiderman (Eds.), Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think (pp. 1–36).

Bryan’s slides


 

WEEK 13

16 Apr: Storage and Search

Required Readings

  • Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, “Useful Void: The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing,” KSG Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP07-022. [download pdf from here]
  • Bush, Vannevar. 1945. As We May Think, Atlantic Monthly; 176 (1): 101-108.

Additional Materials

Slides
Paul’s slides

18 Apr: Advent of the Internet

Required Readings

  • Berners-Lee, Tim. 2000. “info.cern.ch.” Chapters 1-3 in Weaving the Web. New York City: HarperCollins.

Additional Materials

  • Leiner, Barry M., Vinton G. Cerf, David D. Clark, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C. Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry G. Roberts, Stephen Wolff, “A Brief History of the Internet,”  The Internet Society.

Geoff’s slides

WEEK 14

23 Apr: Social Implications of the Internet (Part 1)

Required Readings

Slides
Paul’s slides

25 Apr: Big Data

Guest Lecture: Doug Cutting

Required Readings:

WEEK 15

30 Apr:

Social Implications of the Internet (Part 2)

Required Readings

Slides
Geoff’s slides

2 May:

Social Implications of the Internet (Part 3), course wrap

  • NOTE: Bring to class a large broadsheet newspaper (e.g., the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal)Required reading:

    Additional:

Geoff’s slides

WEEK 16


RRR Week

WEEK 17

15 May: Final Exam