Life on the Internet - Week of September 9, 1996

Schedule

• Monday. Class discussion.
• Wednesday. Class discussion.

Required Reading

1. Clifford Stoll, Silicon Snake Oil, Doubleday, 1995.
2. PBS Life on the Internet - read all the stories under Topics
3. Sherry Turkle, Virtuality and its Discontents: Searching for Community in Cyberspace
4. Session with the Cybershrink: an Interview with Sherry Turkle
5. Steve Talbott, Daily Meditations for the Computer-entranced

Recommended Reading

1. Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, Simon & Schuster, 1995.
2. Stephen L. Talbott, The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Ms in Our Midst, O'Reilly & Associates, 1995.
3. Confronting Technology - On-Line Documents
4. Excerpts from "The Absence of the Sacred" and an interview with Jerry Mander. - Extensive exploration of Mander's views on technology and indigenous culture
5. Mike Whine, The Far Right on the Internet
6. Peter Ludlow, ed., High Noon on the Electronic Frontier: Conceptual Issues in Cyberspace, MIT Press, 1996.
7. Charles Dunlop and Rob Kling, eds., Computerization and Controversy, Value Conflicts and Social Change, Academic Press. Collection of articles on impact of computers on society.

Questions

1. What are the key claims in the readings?
2. In what ways is the Internet changing our personal identity and our public identity?
3. In what ways is the Internet changing our relationships to each other?
4. In what ways is the Internet changing our lives and the societies we live in?
5. What new opportunities are opening up to us because of the Internet?
6. In what ways is the Internet enhancing the quality of our lives?
7. In what ways is the Internet diminishing the quality of our lives?