four-eighty thinking

Notes to self: (1) remember that this is now a two course series, and a lot of content can be pushed to New Media; (2) have fun!

Possible readings

History of writing

Dennis Baron, "From Pencils to Pixels" [online]
Has some problems, but still a good source for starting to think historically about all this stuff. I wonder if it has too much detail about the pencil and not enough about technological change.
Brown & Duguid, Material Matters [online]
Introduction to The Social Life of Information which presents models of technological change. I like the supersession and liberation stuff a lot. But the essay is sooooo stuffy.
Selections from Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy [mine]
Ong’s book still has interesting content; I like the sections which historicize writing (chapters 4 and 5). Might not be enough about computers. Replaceable with Baron?
Selections from Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media [mine] [online]
Students enjoy him; he’s provocative and prescient as well. Probably "medium-message" or remediation bit or something similar. There’s an online text of Part One, which is the theory part. Introduction, chapters 1, 2, and maybe 7 cover media as extension, medium/message, and hot/cold media. But is this more relevant for 489?

Specifics: code, markup, ease, interface, access, etc

Larry Lessig, Code and other laws of cyberspace [WIU lib] [online]
Stuff on markup and code? I read the introduction and conclusion (which are online). There’s also the v2 thing online (including v1). Interesting to have students look at that, too. Yep; if I do assign this, it’ll be online. Excerpt, or all of it?
My "Ease and electracy" (PDF) [online]
This might work in week two; it would introduce a lot of computers/writing issues and help make connections between computers, culture, and writing. The end, with iteration, the standard, translucence, image, hybridity/complex.
Robert Johnson, User-Centered Technology [mine]
Excerpt with the user-centered rhetorical complex and the explanations of the problem of technology which ignores users? A lot of this is in E4E. I might take some of chapter 2 and chapter 3.
Selber, Multiliteracies? [mine]
I liked his three-part literacy classification thingee (functional, critical, rhetorical literacy). I think the best way to attack this is to present his categories and a series of excerpts which define the concepts that he's laying out.
Selections from Steven Johnson, Interface Culture [mine]
One or two chapters---it’s pretty easy to read, so why not? Preface and chapter one give a good introduction to "interface" concept. Epilogue looks forward.
Web standards and standards in general [mostly online]
Wikipedia. A Web Standards Primer The Way Forward with Web Standards Nielsen, Do Interface Standards Stifle Design Creativity?
Mark Pilgrim, Dive Into Accessibility). [online]
Fantastic stuff!
Usability [mostly online]
Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think? (introductory chapters and/or testing material); selections from Nielsen’s web site? Get on Nielsen’s site and find materials, or use older stuff I talked about in XU&TC? Also consider An Open Letter to Jakob Nielsen, a response to this. (debate b/w Shirky and Nielsen about design); View Source... Lessons from the Web’s massively parallel development. (short piece about tools and technologies, really about interfaces---pair with or replace Johnson?)
Clay Shirky, Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags [online]
Fantastic essay about organization by tagging; would be nice to talk more about metadata.

Writing with computers

Vannevar Bush, As We May Think [online]
This would be a good piece for the start of a hypertext unit---what do we do with hypertext thats in this, etc.
Mark Bernstein, Beyond Usability and Design: The Narrative Web [online]
Calls for narrative before other stuff; that is, nothing much has changed, stick with narrative
Web Style Guide online [online]
Lynch and Horton, includes typical stuff about scanning, chunking, etc.
How Users Read on the Web [online]
The ur-essay for all the WotW gospel. See also Be Succinct! (Writing for the Web) and Inverted Pyramids in Cyberspace; Writing for the Web from PSU which gives example.
Print piece; worked with it for the diss. Perhaps with some Tufte and/or the David Byrne stuff, this would work well. Online as well.
Nielsen, Differences Between Print Design and Web Design [online]
Pretty interesting; there are other sources out there which do this, but this is a good one.
Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning Was the Command Line [online]
I think this essay has problems, but it introduces the command line to a lot of folks who won’t know wtf it is, and it has a nice analogy. Need a better link, though. Excerpt?
Content management, databases, and all that?
Maybe something from the Drupal site? Is Drupal right for you? Content management systems Could also talk about server side includes, as on the English site.
Does Internet = Web ?
Nice differentiation by Nielsen.

Intellectual property

Larry Lessig, Free Culture [WIU lib] [online]
Online text (PDF). Intellectual property, a pretty quick read, mix of history and argument. Would probably provoke discussion. Excerpt, or all of it? Supplement: Lessig interview at O’Reilly (and other links there).
Creative Commons, and Dvorak’s stupid column [online]
Also mentioned in Lessig’s book. Dvorak just doesn’t get it; also shows that people still believe old way of copyright is the way it still works. Just background, or CC’s tutorials?
Plaigarism
Newspaper vs schlolary article and/or Turnitin.com and/or term paper mill site---look up more sources, maybe Howard
Unintended Consequences: Four Years under the DMCA from the EFF [online]
Scary recounting of effects of DMCA. Though one could argue the uses are intended. Something for the "other side"?
Kembrew McLeod, Freedom of Expression (PDF)
Might also do something with Kembrew; see interview with CC; chapter six of FoE looks pretty good.
Taylor and Riley, Open Source and Academia
Adaptation of principles of open source to academe

Unclassified

Manovich’s five principles of new media
Can get this from the original (Chapter One), my review, or Madeleine Sorapure’s Kairos bit.
Clifford LynchThe Battle to Define the Future of the Book in the Digital World
Read this
Design
I don’t have much here, do I?
Wikipedia
and wikis in general
Paul Graham’s Hackers and Painters (PDF) [online]
This may have some of the "approach" I want; it talks about creativity and writing and programming in ways that may be unexpected. If not, see the other essays online.
Howard Rheingold: The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier
The online book...
Clay Shirky, Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing
oh me oh my I’m sure there are 8378235235 articles about this out there....would be funny to look at news
foo
Rheingold on technology of Amish and community
Communities, Audiences, and Scale.
Shirky on networks and community; this too
Jeff Rice: Writing about cool
I’m going to use this in the new media class. May grab a few chapters here, or the essay version?
Cynthia Selfe: Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century [mine]
A little dated, but maybe I could pluck something from the preface or other sections.
Edward Tufte: Envisioning Information or Visual Display [mine]
I bet this is expensive to copy...it would also take a whole chapter to get at stuff. Maybe just show some of the visuals?
Richard Lanham, The Electronic Word [mine]
in the office; see what’s excerptable; really good because of literary connections
foreword or more from Ulmer, Internet Invention [mine]
get the whole electracy exigency thing
Walter Benjamin Work of Art.... [online]
Classic. Maybe during history?
Viruses, phishing, security?
don’t want to degrade to panic, but it might be worth reading about. Maybe as part of a larger thing about credibility and urban legends and forwarded emails. Snopes, Pew Internet...
Nielsen’s Effective Use of Style Sheets
Good; lots of links from here.
Problems with Styles in Word Processing
Very quantitative, but interesting.
EIoP Style sheet
Example of a publisher’s style sheet; there are probably a bazillion of these online.
How To Use a Word Processor
Just scratches the surface, but introduces some of the basics. We’ll do some practical stuff, but I also want to talk about the rhetoric of practicality. Should we just dig this up on the fly, or should I find a book from the library? See also: Word Processing: Beyond the Typewriter and a Bottle of Glue; Shauna Kelly’s Microsoft Word
Nardi & O’Day, Information ecologies
Incomplete, but does a nice job introducing the concept and making a case for thinking about information and technologies in terms of systems (really, a specific iteration of social constructivist theory). Could also assign chapter two which attacks good/bad binarism as inevitability, dystopia, etc. Basically same stuff as Duguid but with different terms.
Warschauer: Introduction: Surveying the Terrain of Literacy [online]
Literacy as grounded,
Social networks
Start with this Wikipedia article and go from there.
Interviews with Manuel Castells
Here and here.

Go get these books

Office has a lot of books...check above

Probably not!

Haas, On the Relationship Between Old and New Technologies [online]
Works through some case studies to complicate old/new [supersession] model of technological change; includes work of Bijker and his contingency/constraint theory. But I think there's too much case study and not enough focus on the change here, but more on the workplaces in which the studies are grounded.
Standards
WaSP: Fighting for Standards FAQ: What are web standards and why should I use them? WaSP (add to this my riff on the standard, other points of view: is standards-based design a good idea, or should we be tolerant of a broader approach? Rant against web standards Maybe something about POSIX and other standards and how they work. Nielsen: When Bad Design Elements Become the Standard; Standards and Guidelines for Web Sites; WIU web standards. More thinking here; we’re talking about design a lot, too...
Free Software Foundation and the GPL.
FSF site is mostly organizational stuff. The meat is the GNU philosophy and the licenses and other material elsewhere. Pick some essays which are general.
The Long Tail
Definitely a phenom worth thinking about---but in 480 or 489?
(Joe Clark’s introduction
Went with Pilgrim instead.
Reading and writing online
Generalizations and other patterns about how folks read and write online---let’s check those out. Oh, and those "Writing for the web" books I blasted in XU&TC internet writers handbook. More of these? Or is Web Style Guide enough?
Tim Berners-Lee Weaving the Web
A book; can get this elsewhere.
Jay Bolter Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print
Remediation or other stuff? Or can I just rely on other ideas (e.g. McLuhan) here? Probably.
Lowe’s bibliography [online]
Mostly comp/rhet print sources, though there are a few web and general purpose in there. Look over for anything useful.
Hypertext Rhetoric: Studies for an Online Literary Text Theory
Too much latin makes my head hurt.
Interview with Mark Taylor
Off topic.
Summary and Response to Birkerts
This looks like student work.
DTP with your word processor or draw program
Too old.
Nielsen and Flanders debate from 2001.
Not very exciting; Nielsen demanding that the web be for e-commerce; Flanders saying whatever.
Montaigne and the Word Processor
Plodding; sources might be better.
Johndan’s stuff
I dunno if I want anything specific, but I like jj-e’s stuff, generally.
Word Processing vs. Desktop Publishing
Too short, and I hate about.com ads.
Word Processing vs Graphic Design
from 1998; still ok prolly
Accessibility Features of CSS
Repetitive; see Clark or Pilgrim.
History of the internet and/or computing [online]
Do I really need one of these? Hobbes’ Internet Timeline v8.0 includes a lot of graphs and numbers; Gregory R. Gromov, History of Internet and WWW is rambling and has odd design, but good information, maybe Computer History Museum exhibits which have lots of nice photos
Being creative with a word processor
Too cutesy; better to have students build this on their own.
W3C Style Activity Statement
Not much here, really, that’s high-density general information
Zeldman and W3C on web standards?
Something on web standards from the W3C or a similar organization? Or from Zeldman, his book? No; the book is not really excerptable. It’ll go on the "further reading" list.
Essay from Wendell Berry? [wiu lib]
No; he's just another Birkerts, if not worse.

Other syllabi

Activities