NOTE: This schedule is preliminary until the first class meets and may change slightly through the semester if new issues come up.

June 4 (First Class Day): Background, discussion of class

Reminder about obtaining texts to read: see Texts page.

Fill out questionnaire about educational, technical, and "information" background (in class)

Discuss course and course assignments.

Brief lecture from How to Read a Book.

Topic: Overview of the idea and main concepts of the course: Information, Society, Culture: making critical sense of how the three interact and affect each other.

June 8: Information as Problem: Ronald Day, The Modern Invention of Information: Discourse, History, and Power

Topic: How can we recognize and analyze information within society and culture?

June 10 : Article readings

Akrich, M. (1992). The De-Scription of Technical Objects. In J. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping Technology / Building Society. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Heilbroner, R. (1967). “Do Machines Make History?” Technology and Culture, Vol. 8, No. 3, 335.

Latour, B. (1992). Where are the missing masses? The sociology of a few mundane artifacts. Shaping technology/building society: Studies in sociotechnical change, 225–258.

Star, Susan Leigh and James R. Griesemer (1989). Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-1939. Social Studies of Science, 19(3), 387-420.

June 11: Article readings

Blanchette, J.-F. and Johnson, D.G.. (2002). “Data retention and the Panoptic society: the social benefits of forgetfulness.” The Information Society 18:33-45

Perry. J. et al. (1998). Disability, Inability, and Cyberspace. From Batya Friedman (ed). Designing Computers for People: Human Values and the Design of Computer Technology. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.

Veinot, T. C., & Williams, K. (2012). Following the “community” thread from sociology to information behavior and informatics: uncovering theoretical continuities and research opportunities. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(5), 847-864.

Warschauer, Mark and Morgan Ames (2010). “Can One Laptop Per Child Save the World’s Poor?” Journal of International Affairs 64(1), 33-51.

June 15: Information and Identity: Sherry Turkle, Alone Together

Topic: How can we look at the role information plays in identity--personal, community, and international?

June 17: Article readings:

Floridi, L. (2011). The informational nature of personal identity. Minds and Machines, 21(4), 549-566.

Hartel, Jenna (2011). Information in the Hobby of Gourmet Cooking: Four Contexts. Chapter 7 in William Aspray and Barbara M. Hayes, Everyday Informaton. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Marshall, Catherine (2011). Digital Copies and a Distributed Notion of Reference in Personal Archives. In Megan Winget and William Aspray, Digital Media: Technological and Social Challenges of the Interactive World. Scarecrow Press.

Neufeld, David (2008). “Parks Canada, the Commemoration of Canada, and Northern Aboriginal Oral History,” pp. 7-30 in Paula Hamilton and Linda Shopes, eds. Oral History and Public Memories. Temple University Press.

June 18: Article readings:

Bell, Genevieve (2006). No More SMS From Jesus: Ubicomp, Religion, and Techno-Spiritual Practices. Ubicomp 2006, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4206/2006: 141-158.

Doty, Philip (2011). Privacy, Reading, and Trying Out Identity: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Technological Determinism. In William Aspray and Philip Doty, eds. Privacy in America. Lanham: Scarecrow.

Frost, Jeana H and Massagli, Michael P. (2008). Social Uses of Personal Health Information Within PatientsLikeMe, an Online Patient Community: What Can Happen When Patients Have Access to One Another’s Data. Journal of Medical Internet Research 10(3). Available online: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2553248/

Zerubavel, E. (1996). Social memories: Steps to a sociology of the past. Qualitative Sociology, 19(3), 283–299.

June 22: Information Infrastructure: Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, Sorting Things Out

Topic: How does information work so subtly that we take it for granted?

June 24: Article readings:

James, J. (2011). Are Changes in the Digital Divide Consistent with Global Equality or Inequality? Information Society, 27(2), 121-128.

Klein, H., Kleinman, D. (2002). The Social Construction of Technology: Structural Considerations, Science, Technology & Human Values 27 (January 1): 28-52.

Vertesi, Janet (2008). Mind the Gap: The London Underground Map and Users’ Representations of Urban Space; Social Studies of Science 38 (Feb 01): 7-33.

Yates, Joanne, and Wanda Orlikowski (1992). Genres of Organizational Communication: A Structurational Approach to Studying Communication and Media. The Academy of Management Review 17(2), 299-326.

June 25: Article readings:

Dryden, J. (2012). Guidelines to support professional copyright practice. Journal of Archival Organization, 10, 150-154.

Resnick, P. (2000) Beyond bowling together: Sociotechnical capital. Chapter 29 in HCI in the New Millenium, ed. John M. Carroll. AddisonWesley, 247-272.

Scott D.N. Cook, “The Structure of Technological Revolutions and the Gutenberg Myth,” in Internet Dreams: Archetypes, Myths, and Metaphors, Mark Stefik, ed., 1997.

Wintroub, M. (1999). Taking stock at the end of the world: Rites of distinction and practices of collecting in early modern Europe. Studies in history and philosophy of science, 30, 395–424.

June 29: Information Institutions: Nardi and O'Day, Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart

Topic: What grants power to institutions of memory like archives, libraries, and museums?

July 1: Article readings:

Barbakoff, A. (2010). Libraries Build Autonomy: A Philosophical Perspective on the Social Role of Libraries and Librarians. Library Philosophy and Practice v. 2010.

Bennett, T. (1998). Speaking to the eyes: museums, legibility and the social order. The politics of display: Museums, science, culture, London-New York, Routledge, 25–35.

Kinney, B. (2010). The Internet, Public Libraries, and the Digital Divide. Public Library Quarterly, 29(2), 104-161.

Woolwine, D. E. (2007). Libraries and the Balance of Liberty and Security. Library Philosophy and Practice 2007: 1-17.

July 2: Article readings:

Carter, R. G. S. (2006). Of things said and unsaid: Power, archival silences, and power in silence. Archivaria, 61, 215-233.

Dresang, E. T. (2006). Intellectual Freedom and Libraries: Complexity and Change in the Twenty-First-Century Digital Environment. The Library Quarterly 76, 2 (April): 169-92.

Maack, Mary Niles (2001). “Books and Libraries as Instruments of Cultural Diplomacy In Francophone Africa During the Cold War.” Libraries & Culture 36 (Winter):58-86.

Marty, P. F. (2011). My lost museum: User expectations and motivations for creating personal digital collections on museum websites. Library & Information Science Research, 33(3), 211-219.

July 6: Information Work: Christopher Kelty, Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software

Topic: How does information work with us and us with it?

July 8: Article readings:

Aspray, William (200x). IT Offshoring and American Labor, American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 53, no. 7, 962-982.

Black, Alistair, and Antony Bryant (2011). Knowledge Management and Diplomacy. First Monday 16, 1-3 (January).

Drucker, Peter (1994). “The Age of Social Transformation,” The Atlantic Monthly, November 1994. Available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/95dec/chilearn/drucker.htm

Garcia, A. C., Dawes, M. E., Kohne, M. L., Miller, F. M., & Groschwitz, S. F. (2006) Workplace studies and technological change. In B. Cronin (Ed.), Annual Review of Library and Information Science, 40, 393-487.

July 9: Article readings:

Anderson, T.D. (2011). Beyond eureka moments: Supporting the invisible work of creativity and innovation. Information Research, 16(1), 1-24.

Baym, N.K. (2005). Amateur Experts: International fan labor in Swedish independent music. International Journal of Cultural Studies.

Hutchins, E and Klausen, T. (1996). Distributed cognition in an airline cockpit. In Y. Engestrom and D. Middleton (eds.), Cognition and communication at work. New York: Cambridge University Press

Kuhn, Martin (199x). Interactivity and Prioritizing the Human: A Code of Blogging Ethics. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 22(1), 18–36