Weekly Course Minutes

From Collectivate Course Wikis

Minutes: WEEK 1 (Loren Sonnenberg)

Yochai Benkler Audio

   * Class starts with Benkler audio: 
   * Distributed computing more powerful than any super computer
   * Wealth of available personal computers more important than monolithic centralized systems
   * Radical decentralization of computational and thus cultural production power

Discussion

   * Who does a better job of reporting: mass media or blogosphere?
   * Friendship and cooperation move more and more online and become central to production
   * Decline in civic participation related to increased dependence on virtual interaction
   * Bowling Alone (Robert Putnam)
   * "Technological tyranny" - it has its own agenda and is not neutral according to Jacques Ellul
   * Is "screen time" something forced upon you or is it something that you have control over?
   * What counts as "screen time"? Television, Internet, work?
   * Sections in hospitals for game and Internet addicts are already established
   * Emphasis on solution over process - information over knowledge
   * Knowledge has become fragmented - who reads entire books anymore?

Ellul

   * Jacques Ellul's idea of "technique" - "totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolutely efficiency -    
     technology has become the defining force of social order"
   * Technology fills all of the gaps - mobile office kit - airports, buses, trains, individual cars
   * We are ordered by technology and then begin to actively demand that the others around us become ordered as well
   * Software like MySQL and Photoshop create monoculture
   * Mass media turn propaganda into a constant environment that renders it unnoticeable, says Ellul
   * Blogosphere mitigates the power of the mass media's total control over the public sphere
   * Technology creates a focus on business over the humanities
   * What if there is a public sphere where everyone can speak, but nobody listens? (The Babel Objection)
   * Ellul also addresses the diminished value of the humanities to a technological society. As people begin to question the    
     value of learning ancient languages and history, they question those things which, on the surface, do little to advance 
     their financial and technical state. According to Ellul, this misplaced emphasis is one of the problems with modern 
     education.

Finale

   * "Wild academics" - much more casual/accessible blog-like style of writing that academics do not take as seriously
   * Brief overview of course books