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Syllabus
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Info 218: Concepts of Information
School of Information, UC Berkeley, Spring 2010
Paul Duguid, Geoff Nunberg, instructors
Assignments
Depending on the assignment, we will encourge you to work individually
or collectively on these. Assignments will be related one way or
another to the appropriate class and you will be expected to connect
your findings to the reading. You will be asked to report on your work
in class time. If you wish (and we encourge this) to use a
presentation, please send it to one of us before the class, preferably
in pdf format.
Week
2
26 Jan: Ischool identities
- After looking at the ischool elevator
stories the faculty provided in 2008, please prepare one of your
own -- a prepackaged description of what exactly the program is about
and why we're different from other faculties, which you might give to a
vaguely interested friend, relative, or airline seat mate. This
shouldn't take longer to recite than the length of an elevator ride --
the iSchool elevator! It shouldn't require a trip to Dubai. Submit it
to Paul and Geoff by email before class.
28 Jan: Exercise/discussion: Consuming information
Assignment:
- Keep a diary of your information consumption (however you
choose to define it) for a few hours (or a few days, whichever seems
most manageable according to your definition). Be sure to come up with
a numerical total and be prepared to defend the number, your
definition, and your consumption and to discuss your findings in class.
Reading:
Background:
Zeitgeist:
Week
3
4 Feb: Exercise/discussion: Information and the
public sphere
Assignment:
- Popular articles sometimes discuss the idea of the Internet
as a "public sphere." Find such a discussion (hint: put 'Internet AND
"public sphere" into Google News, LexisNexis, Proquest news sources, or
some such) and explore how and why it is using this term. Find another
article for a general audience that talks about the public sphere in a
contemporary context but not about the Internet and consider the extent
to which the concept of public sphere in the two cases is or is not
distinct.
Here are a couple of additional questions that might help to center in
on one aspect of the issue -- but there's no need to address any of
these if you are already taking this in some other direction.
1. The notion of the public sphere is sometimes applied to the internet
as a whole and sometimes to various sub-discourses or (putative)
virtual communities (e.g., Slashdot, the open source movement, etc.)
Does one or the other of these applications of the concept seem more
appropriate?
2. What do you think of Poster's argument that the protean nature of
online identities makes the net fundamentally different from the
"classical" public sphere?
3. Of the various criteria that people invoke to define the public
sphere (autonomy/independence, equality, inclusiveness/accessiblity,
rationality of discussion, etc.), do one or more strike you as
particularly relevant/irrelevant to the application of the notion to
the internet?
In addition to the Papacharissi, you might find useful the discussion
in the following, if necessary:
Allison Cavanagh. 2007. Sociology
in the Age of the Internet. Milton Keynes: Open University
Press. pp 59 ff.
Dahlberg, Lincoln. 2001. "Computer-Mediated
Comunication and the Public Sphere: A Critical Analysis", JCMC
7(1)
Reading:
Background:
Zeitgeist:
Week 5
16 Feb: Exercise/discussion: Wikipedia project
Assignment:
- Find four Wikipedia articles, two of which you consider
authoritative & well-organized, and two of which you consider
unreliable and/or poorly organized. Your judgment can be based either
on internal grounds or on the basis of your independent knowledge of
the subject matter -- in either case, say which and why.
One article in each pair should deal with a topic in a well-behaved or
canonized area of culture --for examlpe, an article on a scientific
topic, a literary or artistic movement or figure (that
belongs to "high culture"), a historical event, or some other subject
whose study belongs to some well established discipline or literature.
The other should deal with a topic belonging to popular culture,
broadly construed (even if it is also dealt with in a scholarly
literature), a word or concept that's bandied about in the media, etc.
For each article try to say why the collective authority process did or
didn't work, and whether this principle generalizes (i.e., are most
articles about subjects in this field likely to be reliable?). It may
be helpful to look at the history & contributors (e.g., what other
articles did they contribute to?)
Finally, try to get a sense of how this article fits into the
treatments of the larger field it belongs to. Does Wikipedia give one a
sense of this topic as part of a larger organization of knowledge?
You're encouraged to do this assigment in pairs. It isn't necessary to
write up the entire exercise -- some background plus enough to put up
for a presentation. If you find this is taking more time than it should
(you be the judge, but it shouldn't take more than 5-7 min. to
present), simplify it by reducing the number of Wikipedia entries or
leaving out some part of the assignment. If you have any further
questions or need clarifications, email Paul or me.
Reading: See readings for 2/16 on syllabus page Zeitgeist
Slides
18 Feb: Exercise/discussion: Objectivity
Assignment:
Week 6
25 Feb: Exercise/discussion: searching the law
Assignment:
- Read ProCD v Zeidenberg. In class on Thursday you will be divided into two teams, one of which will be asked to support and the other oppose the decision, using whatever sources and resources you think useful and dispositive.
Week 7
4 Mar: Exercise/discussion: information and the census
Assignment:
- Take a couple of US census forms from different periods--or
take a US and foreign census form--and explore what they (and perhaps the controversy around them) might tell us about changing ideas of what is and is not considered legitimate state information--or of what might be considered information at all. Work in pairs if you can. Send any material us you want to present before the discussion class on Thursday.
Sources:
Zeitgeist:
Week 8
11 Mar: Exercise/discussion
Slides
Week 9
18 Mar: Exercise/discussion: political symbols
[final project/proposal papers due]
Week 10
Midterm break
- No classes -
Week 13
13 Apr: Exercise/discussion
[final project outlines due]
Assignment:
Find a discussion for a general or specialized audience that
handles economic views of information in interesting and insightful or in problematic and incoherent ways. Consider how this discussion does or does not map on to other generally held ideas about information that we have discussed so far.
Reading:
Week 14
22 Apr: Exercise/discussion
Assignment:
Week 16
3 May: Presentations
5 May: Presentations
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