Overview

Conceptual Overview

In the years immediately following World War II, scientific work in areas like ballistics, encryption, and computing culminated in the development of the modern digital computer and new disciplines called cybernetics or information technology. At the center of this work was the use of digital code-sequences of 0's and 1's-to accomplish tasks of communication and computation at speeds unattainable by ordinary means. Slowly, these developments in computer science and information theory have penetrated many regions of social life. Digitalizing has not just introduced the computer into our everyday lives or "jacked" us into the Internet. It has also produced new cultural myths, new technologies of the body, and new forms of entertainment. This course will try to understand these developments by studying three kinds of writing in relation to one another.
1) A few (user friendly) classic texts from the early theory of digital communication: by Alan Turing, Norbert Weiner, Vannevar Bush, and others. These texts help to give an historical grounding to our understanding of digitalization.
2) What are the underlying forms of digital culture and their implications for the way we live? Theories of new digital media offer cogent critical analysis of some of the new forms of digital media: the digital visual, the network, the database, and virtual reality. Digitalization poses urgent social issues: for example, the plasticity, variety, and pervasiveness of the new digital media have intensified long-standing worries that "media determines culture," but they have also liberated us to reinterpret the human as an information system (a cyborg).
3) Since the earliest days of digitalization, the work of computer scientists and science fiction writers have been incited by the idea that a computer can be understood as a brain, the brain as a computer. Is this a fruitful scientific hypothesis or a fraught rivalry? Does it herald the end of humanism or a life-enhancing alliance? What happens when computers get small and begin to change the way we see, hear, and touch? when molecular biology allows us to reinterpret organisms as machines? We will seek a nuanced and critical understanding of this exchange between the human body and the computer in texts and films like, I, Robot (Asimov) 2001/ A Space Odyssey (Clarke/Kubrick); A Cyborg Manifesto (Haraway), Neuromancer (Gibson), Snow Crash (Stephenson), and The Matrix.

Technology Help:
Jennifer Jones: jjj0@umail.ucsb.edu
Tues, Thurs 9:30-11:30AM, and by appointment
South Hall 2509 (the Transcriptions Studio)

Eric Weitzel: ejw0@umail.ucsb.edu
Wed, Fri. 9:00-11AM and by appointment
South Hall 2509 (the Transcriptions Studio)

Required Texts (see Materials and Schedule):
(may purchased at the UCEN or in Isle Vista)

1. Isaac Asimov, I, Robot. New York: Bantam Books
2. Arthur C. Clarke, 2001/ A Space Odyssey. New York: Penguin Books (25th anniversary edition).
3. William Gibson, Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books.
4. Neil Stephenson, Snow Crash. New York: Bantam Books
5. English 197 Course Reader Readers may be purchased at the Alternative Copy Shop; 6556 Pardall Road; Isla Vista (968-1055).

Talk
English 197 email alias: E197DC01@humanitas.ucsb.edu
(Write to this alias if you would like all in the class to receive a message.)

Professor Warner: warner@humanitas.ucsb.edu
(Write to my email if you are writing to me only.)

Support from UCSB:
If you experience difficulty in this course for any reason, please don't hesitate to consult with me. In addition to the resources of the department, a wide range of services is available to support you in your efforts to meet the course requirements. Here are three support services provdied by UCSB: