Nathan L. Ensmenger
School of Information
University of Texas
Office: UTA 5.450
Category: teaching
Doctoral Research & Theory, Part II New Course
Date: January 10, 2012 Category: teaching
Becoming a professional academic means learning how to do research.
In this seminar, we will focus on epistemological concepts and processes of theory generation and testing as they apply to the study of Information. Our goal is to provide you with the tools needed to advance to the next level in your scholarly career.
In addition to learning about the theory and practice of research, you will also develop the professional skills associated with being a working academic, including presentation, publication, networking, and teaching. The readings will focus on the application of theories from the social and humanistic studies of science and technology to contemporary questions in information studies.
Date: August 22, 2011 Category: teaching
The history of the information age is about more than just the electronic digital computer. It is the story of a wide range of human activities, scientific practices, and technological developments. The story begins in the early 19th century with the emergence of new demands for communications and information management — from scientific researchers, expanding government bureaucracies, and increasingly national and international corporations. It includes not only “computers’’ (itself a large and diverse category) but data processing, communications, and visualization technologies, as well as people, practices, and organizational structures. In this new graduate seminar, we will explore the history of computing and communications in all of its forms and varieties. We will situate the computer in the broader history of technology, but also consider it from the perspectives of the history of science, labor history, and social history.
Date: March 01, 2011 Category: teaching
This summer I will be teaching once again my course on contemporary issues in computer culture and policy. The course explores the various social implication of information technology: social, cultural, political, and economic. By considering by a wide variety
of perspectives on the Information Revolution, we examine the relationship between new information technologies and changing notions of community, identity, property, and democracy. Topics will include intellectual property
rights, Linux and the free software movement, cyber libertarianism, and the rise
and fall of the dot.com economy.
Download the most recent version of the STSC 465 syllabus in PDF form
Date: January 27, 2011 Category: teaching
Free speech, free software, MOOS, MUDs, anime and cyberpunk. All of these are elements of a broad set of social, technical and political phenom- ena generally associated with the emergence of a nascent “cyberculture.” In this seminar we explore the ways in which recent developments in information technology – the computer and the Internet in particular – relate to changing contemporary notions of community, identity, property, and gender. By looking at an eclectic collection of popular and scholarly resources, including film, fiction and the World Wide Web, we will situate the development of “cyberculture” into the larger history of the complex relationship between technology and Western society.
Date: September 03, 2010 Category: teaching
Certain new technologies are greeted with claims that, for good or ill, they must transform our society. The two most recent: the computer and the Internet. But the series of social, economic, and technological developments that underlie what is often called the “Information Revolution” include much more than just the computer. In this course, we examine what made this series of develop- ments seem so revolutionary, who said what about them, and why. We chart changing perceptions of information technologies as people begin to experience them as a part of everyday life and work. We will explore both the technologies themselves as well as their larger social, economic, and political context.These perspectives will inform our discussion of current issues such as life and censor- ship in ‘cyberspace’.
Date: December 10, 2009 Category: media teaching
In the last lecture of my Information Age course, I discussed the problem of privacy in the Internet era. As one of my examples, I referred to the popular campus blog Sleeping in Van Pelt which posts pictures of people – you guessed it – sleeping in Van Pelt Library. The next day, the site Sleeping in Van Pelt featured a picture of me lecturing in front of a huge video screen featuring an image of the website Sleeping in Van Pelt.
You see where this is going: next year, a website featuring me showing a picture of the website showing me showing a picture of the website…
An infinite number of ensmengers, going all the way down…
Date: September 22, 2008 Category: teaching
This graduate seminar explores the emergence and widespread adoption in the early Cold War-period of a set of interrelated tools, techniques, and discourses organized around the concept of “information.” These emerging information science included not only new disciplines such as cybernetics, information theory, operations research, and ecology, but also some traditional physical sciences – such as biology and chemistry – as well as a broad range of social sciences, including economics, political science, sociology, and urban planning. The focus of the course will be on tracing the important structural changes in post-war science that encouraged the adoption of the rhetoric of information (if not its substance), as well as on extending the relevance of these developments to a wide range of topics in the history of science, medicine, and technology.