INSTRUCTORS:

Paul Duguid
Geoffrey Nunberg

Assignments Page


---------------

CLASSES:

August 29
Questions of Quality & Infoenthusiasms



Geoff's slides

Paul's slides

---------------
September 5:
Quantity vs Quality (1): Quantity

reading
Varian, Hal & Peter Lyman. 2003. How Much Information 2003 -- Executive Summary

optional
Brown, John Seely & Paul Duguid. 2000. "Limits to Information", Chapter 1 in John Seely Brown & Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press: pp 11-34.

Nunberg, Geoffrey. 1996. Farewell to the Information Age, in G. Nunberg (ed.) The Future of the Book. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

assignment

Geoff's slides

Paul's slides


---------------
September 12:
Quantity vs Quality (2):Quality & Rotten Information

reading
"Youth, Pornography, and the Internet"
National Research Council report

Read Intro, pp. 17-83, 201-216, 267-303.

Slides

---------------
September 19:
Economics, information, and quality

reading
Hayek, Frederich. 1945. "The Use of Knowledge in Society,"American Economic Review 35 (September): 519-30 [JSTOR]

and

Romer, Paul. 1993. "Idea Gaps and Object Gaps in Economic Development" Journal of Monetary Economics 32(3): 543-573 [Science Direct]

optional

Marshall, Alfred. 1890. "Industrial Organization, Continued; The Concentration of Specialized Industries in Particular Locastion. Book IV Chapter X in Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics. London. Macmillan.
Slides


---------------
September 27:
Literacy

reading
Harvey Graff. 1993. "Literacy, myths, and legacies: Lessons from the past/thoughts for the future," Interchange  24(3).

and

Stanley Wilder. 2005. "Information Literacy Makes All the Wrong Assumptions." Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan 7.

Also:

Review the material on "information literacy" presented by
American Library Association
and
American Council of Research Libraries.

Click around until you have a sense of how librarians have been thinking about this stuff.

assignment
circulated to quality@ischool

---------------

October 3:
Authors, authority, & reputation: then & now

reading
Foucault, Michel. 1979. 'What Is an Author?' in J. Harari (ed.), Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp: 141-160.

and

Hoover, J. Nicholas. 2007. "Web Credibility: Hard Earned, Harder to Prove."Information Week(Jul)y.

Paul's slides

---------------
October 10:
The dictionary: then & now

reading
Lynch, Clifford. 2001. The Battle to Define the Future of the Book in the Digital World   First Monday 6(6)

Mckean, Erin. 2007. Redefining the Dictionary TED

If you like, in the interest of general cultural edification, you might also look at:
http://www.british-library.uk/learning/images/texts/dict/transcript1387.html

Geoff's slides

---------------
October 17:
From the press to the blog: journalism then and now

reading

"Goodbye to Gutenberg" 2006. Nieman Reports, 60(4)

choose one or more articles from this collection on the future of the press; be prepared to defend or attack it or them in class.
---------------
October 24:
From the press to the blog: journalism then and now (continued)
Paul's slides

     proposals for final papers due
---------------
October 31:
Print Culture & Beyond: then & now
Paul's slides
reading
Kelly, Kevin. 2006. "Scan This Book!" New York Times, May 14.

and

reading
Benkler, Yochai. 2006. A Moment of Opportunity and Challenge, pp 1-34 in The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press. Download under Creative Commons Licence.


optional
Wilkinson, Dennis M. and Bernardo H. Huberman. 2007. Assessing the Value of Cooperation in Wikipedia, First Monday 12(4)
and
Errors in the Encyclopaedia Britannica That Have Been Corrected in Wikipedia
and
Updike, John. 2006 "The End of Authorship," New York Times, June 24


assignment
report on your work on Wikipedia

---------------
November 7:
Visitor: Mike Dixon, Google News

reading
tba



---------------
November 14:
Intellectual Property as Quality Assurance
Paul's slides
reading
Mark Helprin, 2007. "A Great Idea Lives Forever. Shouldn't Its Copyright?" New York Times, May 20.

and

Hesse, Carla. 2002. The Rise of Intellectual Property, 700 B.C.- A.D. 2000: An Idea in the Balance, Daedalus (Spring): 26-45.


optional

Barlow, John Perry. 1994. The Economy of Ideas: A Framework for Patents and Copyrights in the Digital Age. (Everything You Know about Intellectual Property Is Wrong). Wired 2.03, March.


Leonhardt, David. 2007. "When Trust in an Expert is Unwise"  New York Times , November 7.

"The Not-Google Phone"  New York Times , November 7.

     outlines of final papers due
---------------
November 21:
Discussion class

---------------
November 28:
Civility and the Public Sphere

reading
tbd

     final papers due

---------------
December 5:
Presentation of final papers and discussion