Study Materials
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Required Readings
(Outline numbers below are for ease of reference only; see Schedule for order of readings)

A. Required Books Available at UCSB Bookstore
  Links in this section are to descriptions on the Amazon.com site. (Policy statement on links to commercial sites.)

 

  1. Albert Borgmann, Holding on to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium (U. Chicago Press, 1999)
  2. Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000: The Revolution Reshaping American Business (Penguin, 1991)
  3. Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, Vol. 1 of The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (Blackwell, 1996)
  4. Timothy Druckrey, Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual Representation (Aperture, 1996)
  5. Steven Johnson, Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate (HarperCollins, 1997)

B. Required Course Reader Available at the Alternative Copy Shop
(Contents in Alphabetical Order)
 


  1. Jean Baudrillard, "Requiem for the Media," in For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (Telos, 1981)
  2. Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (New York: Basic, 1973), excerpt
  3. Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (MIT Press, 1999), excerpt
  4. Cleanth Brooks, "The Heresy of Paraphrase," in The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1947, 1975) [rpt. in Hazard Adams, ed., Critical Theory Since Plato, rev. ed. (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992)]
  5. William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone, The Virtual Corporation (1992), excerpt
  6. Johanna Drucker, The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909-1923 (1994), excerpt
  7. Peter F. Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society (New York: HarperBusiness / HarperCollins, 1993), excerpt
  8. Donna J. Haraway, "The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies: Constitutions of Self in Immune System Discourse," in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 203-30
  9. Michael E. Hobart & Zachary S. Schiffman, "Orality and the Problem of Memory," in Information Ages: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Computer Revolution (Johns Hopkins UP, 1998), excerpt [book is also on 1-day reserve at the library]
  10. William Gibson, "Academy Leader," in Michael Benedikt, ed., Cyberspace: First Steps (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), pp. 27-29
  11. George P. Landow, Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1997), excerpt
  12. Brenda Laurel, Computers as Theatre (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1993, 1991), excerpt
  13. Marshall McLuhan, "The Medium is the Message" and "Media Hot and Cold" (1964)
  14. Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982), excerpt
  15. Donn P. Parker, Fighting Computer Crime: A New Framework for Protecting Information (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998), excerpt
  16. Robert B. Reich, The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st-Century Capitalism (New York: Random House, 1992), excerpt
  17. Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (Doubleday, 1990), excerpt
  18. Jonathan Steur, "Defining Virtual Reality," Journal of Communication 42 (1992): 79-90
  19. Jan Tschichold, The New Typography (1928), excerpt
  20. Warren Weaver, "Recent Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Communication" (1949), excerpt

C. Required Online Works
(Contents in Alphabetical Order)
 
 


  1. Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936)
  2. Daniel Chandler, "The Transmission Model of Communication" (1994)
  3. Roger Chartier, The Cultural Uses of Print in Early Modern France (1987), pp. 158-67, 180-82
  4. M.D. Coverley, Fibonacci's Daughter
  5. Critical Art Ensemble, The Electronic Disturbance (1994), Chaps. 2, 4, 5
  6. William Gibson, Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) (1992)
  7. Andy Goldsworthy's "land art" (photos and selected text) (password needed; restricted to students in this course)
  8. Matt Kirschenbaum, "A White Paper on Information" (1998)
  9. Raine Koskimaa, "Visual Structuring of Hyperfiction Narratives" (1997)
  10. Stuart Moulthrop (U. Baltimore), "The Shadow of an Informand: An Experiment in Hypertext Rhetoric" (1992-94)
  11. Archibald MacLeish, "Ars Poetica" (1926)
  12. Plato, from Phaedrus (do a search in the text and begin reading at the sentence: "Shall we discuss the rules of writing and speech as we were proposing?")
  13. Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), pp. 82-84 (on "creative destruction")
  14. Winn Schwartau, Information Warfare, p. 33
  15. Claude E. Shannon, "The Mathematical Theory of Communication" (1948), pp. 3-6
  16. Bruce Sterling, Hacker Crackdown (1992/1994), Section 2.2 (Full text of the book available here)
  17. Willam Wordsworth, "Tintern Abbey" (1798)
  18. Steven Wray, "The Electronic Disturbance Theater and Electronic Civil Disobedience" (1998)
  19. Shoshanna Zuboff, excerpts on the "overview" and "vision" enabled by computing from In the Age of the Smart Machine

 


Supplementary Resources
The following is just the beginning of a compendium of additional resources. Students in the course (and visitors from elsewhere) are encouraged to suggest additional resources by e-mailing the instructor. The idea is to build a limited, highly selective set of supplementary materials.
 

D. (Classes 1-4) The Age of Knowledge Work
  1. Class 1: Introduction
  2. Class 2: "Learning Organizations"

  3. Class 3: "Networked Enterprise"

  4. Class 4: "Symbolic Analysts"
    • Alvin W. Gouldner, The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class: A Frame of Reference, Theses, Conjectures, Arguments, and an Historical Perspective on the Role of Intellectuals and Intelligentsia in the International Class Contest of the Modern Era (New York: Seabury, 1979)
    • Barbara Ehrenreich and John Ehrenreich, "The Professional-Managerial Class," in Pat Walker, ed., Between Labor and Capital: The Professional Managerial Class (Boston: South End, 1979)
    • Bruce Robbins, Secular Vocations: Intellectuals, Professionalism, Culture (New York: Verso, 1993)
    • Palinurus: The Academy and the Corporation -- Teaching the Humanities in a Restructured Age (Alan Liu); see esp.
      • Suggested Readings > The Idea of Business > Postindustrial Business Principles > Postindustrial Business Principles > Professional / Managerial / Technical "New Class"
      • Suggested Readings > The Idea of Business > Postindustrial Business Principles > Postindustrial Business Principles > Knowledge Work, Knowledge Management, Learning Organizations
      • Suggested Readings > Academe and Business
      • Suggested Readings > The Idea of the University
      • Suggested Readings > The Idea of the University > Intellectuals

E. (Classes 6-11) Introduction to the Prehistory & History of Information
  1. Class 6: From Nature to Information

  2. Class 7 (continued)
    • Herbert Marcuse, "Some Social Implications of Modern Technology," in Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt, ed., The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (New York: Continuum, 1988)
    • Julian H. Scaff, "Art & Authenticity in the Age of Digital Reproduction"
    • Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Belknap, 1999) (Amazon.com page on the book)
    • Suan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989)
    • VoS Resources on Frankfurt School
    • Vos Resources on Benjamin

  3. Class 9: SPEAKING, WRITING, READING, INFORMING

  4. Class 10: (continued)

  5. Class 11: (continued)

F. (Classes 13-19) Acts of Information, 1948-2000
  1. Class 13: Communicating

  2. Class 14: Mediating

  3. Class 15: (continued)

  4. Class 16: Interfacing (Seeing/Designing)

  5. Class 17: (continued)

  6. Class 18: Simulating

  7. Class 19: Securing

G. (Class 20) Art 2000
  • Class 20: The Strange Web: Art, Hacking, Terrorism

 


Related Courses
 


 

Guides and FAQs
 

J. Guides to Online Research
  1. Online Research Resources (library catalogues, digital text archives, periodical indices, etc.; includes both general-access and UCSB-only resources)
  2. Online Reference Resources (dictionaries, thesauri, atlases, encyclopedias, etc.)
  3. Online Resources for Writing and Speaking (grammer and style guides, writing tips, advice on oral presentations, etc.)
  4. Evaluating & Citing Online Resources (checklists, exercises, examples, and annotated links; also includes a printable form to use in tracking and evaluating online sites)

 


K. Guides to Technology in Transcriptions Courses (see Technology overview)
  1. Web-Authoring Basics (basic outline of the process required to download, revise, and upload web pages associated with Transcriptions courses)
  2. Resources for Web-Authoring (design and how-to advice for both beginning and advanced Web authors; includes links to HTML and design style guides, help with images, and examples of good and bad design)
  3. How to Use the Web to Add/Edit Content in the Project's Timeline or Linkbase Databases (step-by-step guide)
  4. How to Post Messages in the Exchange Messaging Environment (step-by-step guide)

 


 

This page is part of the Transcriptions Project
Page content by Alan Liu | Graphic design by Eric Feay
(revised 12/6/00)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Policy on Links to Commercial Sites

Where useful, this course site links to the bookseller's or publisher's page carrying the most substantive additional information about a work at the time the link was created. Often such a page offers not only publishers' descriptions but tables of contents, reviews, and suggestions of related books. This is done as a service to students, and is not intended to endorse any particular commercial or other venture.

For links to publishers' sites from many nations, see Publishers' Catalogues Home Page. For an annotated guide and links to major online booksellers, see Best Big On-Line Bookstores. For online comparison shopping of books, see Acses. For other publisher and bookseller sites, see Voice of the Shuttle: Publishers.