Computing Cultures

STS/INFO/VISST/COMM 3561
MW 2:55-4:10 p.m.
Phillips 203
Associate Professor Rachel Prentice, rep35@cornell.edu
305 Rockefeller
Office Hours: 11-12 Mondays and by appointment

Please go to blackboard.cornell.edu for the most up-to-date course information.

Course Description
Computers are powerful tools for working, playing, thinking, and living. Laptops, PDAs,
webcams, cell phones, and iPods surround us. They are not just devices. They also
provide narratives, metaphors, and ways of seeing the world. While computers have
already been clearly implicated in changes in work practices, in the last 20 years they
have also become inextricably bound up in all aspects of our everyday lives. This
generation of college students is the first for whom instant messaging, mobile phones,
and on-line networking are a normal and an essential part of social life. How are the lives
of people in the United States and elsewhere changing, for better and for worse, with
these technologies? What cultural trends and political forces do they embody? And how
could we design, engage, use, or not use them in ways that improve our lives and our
societies?

In this course, we critically examine how computing technology and culture shape each
other. We identify how computers, networks, and information technologies reproduce,
reinforce, and rework historical trends, norms and values. We look at the values
embodied in the cultures of computing and consider alternative ways to imagine, build,
and work with information technologies.

The primary goals for this course are as follows:

1. To explore social science concepts from Science & Technology Studies, Sociology
and Anthropology as they relate to historical and contemporary trends in computing.

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2. To understand how computing technologies are both emerging from and
reshaping their historical, cultural, and political contexts. Why are computing
technologies emerging in their current form? What cultural values do they embody?
How are they both reinforcing and reshaping existing cultural and political trends?
3. To further students’ abilities to engage computing-related topics critically. In
particular, the course will emphasize students’ abilities to make strong arguments and
support them with the reading material.

The area of computing culture is a huge field, and this course does not provide a
comprehensive overview of every area of computing and culture. Instead, we focus on
providing a basic understanding of cultural trends involved in computing and critical
strategies that students can use to engage any aspect of computing.

Prerequisites
No other courses are required before enrolling in this course. Since this is a 300-level
course, we expect you to have developed the following skills: to be able to read
challenging texts carefully and critically and to write effective, coherent arguments. No
prior experience with computers is expected, aside from typical experiences with
consumer technologies.

Work Required
The most important assignment in this course is to complete all of the reading assigned,
and to do so carefully and critically. Comprehension of the arguments in these texts is
essential to your success in this course. You are expected to read actively (for example to
look up terms and ideas that are not clear from the texts), to comprehend the authors’
arguments, and to come to class prepared to discuss the ideas in the reading and your
reactions to them. There are two books required for purchase in this class (all other
readings will be posted on Blackboard):

• Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter, Games of Empire: Capitalism and

Video Games. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
• Shoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine: the Future of Work and
Power. New York: Basic Books, 1989.

Your attendance in this class is expected and an essential element of your coursework.
You should come to class with the day’s assigned readings and your notes on them. This
course mixes lectures with interactive, group exercises that will be used in class to
develop comprehension of material. Lack of attendance and participation will have a
serious negative effect on your grade, as well as your understanding of the material. The
teaching staff will take attendance at their discretion.

Assignments and grading

(please see complete assignment memo on Blackboard for more information).

1. Three papers (one per section), 4-5 pages each (20 percent each)
2. Three short responses, 1 page each (5 percent each)

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 3. Blackboard questions and responses, plus class participation (25 percent).

In addition, I reserve the right to adjust this numerical score up or down by up to a half
letter grade based on factors which these raw numbers do not easily capture, such as
evidence of substantial improvement or degradation in thinking across the course.

There are no exams in this class, but I may give a quiz or two if I think students will
benefit.

Syllabus
Please note the details of this syllabus are subject to change in response to student needs
over the semester.

Introduction
January 24: Information Overload

January 26: Information and Society

- John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information, pp. 11-33
(Blackboard).

Section 1

Surveillance
January 31: Surveillance Nation
- Dan Farmer and Charles C. Mann, “Surveillance Nation, Part 1,” Technology
Review, April 2003 (Blackboard).
- David Lyon, “Everyday Surveillance,” Information, Communication &
Society, 5(2) 2002, 242-257 (Blackboard).
- Julia Angwin and Steve Stecklow, “’Scrapers’ Dig Deep for Data on the
Web,” Wall Street Journal, October 12, 2010 (Blackboard).

February 2: Tokens of Trust

- Dan Farmer and Charles C. Mann, “Surveillance Nation, Part 2,” Technology
Review, May 2003 (Blackboard).
- David Lyon, “Biometrics, Identification and Surveillance,” Bioethics, 22(9)
2008, 499-508 (Blackboard).

February 7: Wikileaks and Free Speech (Who’s Watching the Watchers?)

- Raffi Khatchadourian, “No Secrets,” The New Yorker, June 7, 2010
(Blackboard).
- Anthony Lewis, “Democracy and a Free Press: Are they Incompatible?”
Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 50(5) March 1997,
49-63 (Blackboard).

February 9: Surveillance at Work

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 - Shoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine, Chapter 9, 315-361.

Work
February 14: Divisions of Labor
- Adam Smith, “Of the Division of Labour,” from The Wealth of Nations.
(Blackboard)
- Charles Babbage, On the Division of Mental Labour (Blackboard)
(Note: you are not responsible for the paragraphs in French)
- Charlie Gere, “The Beginnings of Digital Culture” in Digital Culture, Chapter
1, 17-46 (Blackboard).

February 16: Deskilling and Reskilling Workers

- Zuboff, Chapter 2, 58-96
- Zuboff, Conclusion, 387-413.

February 21: Automating and Informating

- Zuboff, Chapter 4, 124-173.

February 23: Immaterial Labor

- Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greg de Peuter, “Cognitive Capitalism: Electronic
Arts” in Games of Empire, Chapter 2
- Heinrich Schwarz, “The Hidden Work in Virtual Work” (Blackboard).

Section 2

@ Cultures Online
February 28: Community
- René T.A. Lysloff (2003) “Musical Community on the Internet: An On-Line
Ethnography, Cultural Anthropology. 18 (2) 233-263 (Blackboard).
- John Cassidy, “Me Media,” The New Yorker, May 15, 2006 (Blackboard).
- Malcolm Gladwell, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be
Tweeted,” The New Yorker, October 4, 2010 (Blackboard).

March 2: Hackers, Dancers, Cyborgs

- Gabriella Coleman, “The Hacker Conference: A Ritual Condensation and
Celebration of a Lifeworld,” Anthropological Quarterly, 83(1) Winter 2010,
47-72 (Blackboard).
- Joanna Demers, “Dancing Machines: ‘Dance Dance Revolution’, cybernetic
dance, and musical taste,” Popular Music 25(3) 2006, 401-414 (Blackboard).

March 7: Dissenters
- Zhou Yongming (2005) “Living on the Cyber Border,” Current Anthropology
46 (5) 779-803 (Blackboard).
- Evan Osnos, “Angry Youth: The New Generation’s Neocon Nationalists,”
The New Yorker, July 28, 2008 (Blackboard).

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March 9: Exiles
- Victoria Bernal, “Eritrea On-Line: Diaspora, Cyberspace, and the Public
Sphere,” American Ethnologist, 32(4), 660-675 (Blackboard).
- Meg McLagan, “Computing for Tibet: Virtual Politics in the Post-Cold War
Era,” in George E. Marcus, editor, Connected: Engagements with Media, 159-
194 (Blackboard).

“Information Wants to be Free”

March 14: Who Owns the Internet?
- Lawrence Lessig, “The Architecture of Innovation,” Duke Law Journal 51(6)
2002, 1783-1801 (Blackboard).

March 16: Free and Open Source Software

- Anita Chan, “Coding Free Software, Coding Free States: Free Software
Legislation and the Politics of Code in Peru,” Anthropological Quarterly,
77(3) 2004, 531-545 (Blackboard)
- Gabriella Coleman, “High-Tech Guilds in the Era of Global Capital,”
Anthropology of Work Review, 22(1) March 2001, 28-32 (Blackboard).

March 28: Sampling Culture

- Nitasha Sharma (1999) “Down By Law: Responses and Effects of Sampling
Restrictions on Rap,” PoLAR 22(1) (Blackboard)
- Martin Scherzinger, “Music, Corporate Power, and Unending War,” Cultural
Critique 60, Spring 2005, 23-67 (Blackboard).

March 30: I Google, You Google, We All Google

- Ken Auletta, “The Search Party,” The New Yorker, Jan. 14, 2008
(Blackboard).
- Jeffrey Toobin, “Google’s Moon Shot,” The New Yorker, February 5, 2007
(Blackboard)
- Jessica E. Vascellaro, “Google Agonizes on Privacy as Ad World Vaults
Ahead,” The Wall Street Journal, August 10, 2010.

Section 3

War
April 4: Computing’s Military Origins
- Jennifer Light, “When Computers Were Women,” Technology & Culture,
40(3) July 1999, 455-482 (Blackboard).

April 6: Cyberwar
- Seymour Hersh, “The Online Threat: Should We Be Worried about a Cyber
War?” The New Yorker, November 1, 2010 (Blackboard).
- Christopher Williams, “Stuxnet: Cyber attack on Iran ‘was carried out by
Western powers and Israel,” The Telegraph, January 21, 2011 (Blackboard)
- “How Stuxnet Works: What the forensic evidence reveals,” The Telegraph,

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 January 21, 2011 (Blackboard).

April 11: Drones

- Jane Mayer, “The Predator War,” The New Yorker, October 26, 2009
(Blackboard).
- Robert Sparrow, “Predators or Plowshares,” IEEE Technology and Society,
spring 2009, 25-29 (Blackboard)
- “Droning On: How to build an ethical understanding into pilotless war
planes,” The Economist, March 31, 2010 (Blackboard).

April 13: War, Simulation, Education

- Timothy Lenoir, “All but War is Simulation: The Military-Entertainment
Complex,” Configurations 8, 2000, 289-335 (Blackboard)
- J.D. Fletcher (2009) “Education and Training Technology in the Military,”
Science 323, 72-75 (Blackboard).

Video Games
April 18: America’s Army
- Carrie McLeroy, “Leveraging ‘America’s Army,” Soldiers, September 2008,
10-15 (Blackboard)
- Robin Anderson and Marin Kurti, “From America’s Army to Call of Duty:
Doing Battle with the Military Entertainment Complex,” Democratic
Communiqué, 23(1) Spring 2009, 45-65 (Blackboard)
- John Seely Brown, Allan Collins, Paul Duguid (1989) “Situated Cognition
and the Culture of Learning,” Educational Researcher 18 (1) 32-42
(Blackboard).

April 20: War Games

- Games of Empire, Chapter 4: Banal War: Full Spectrum Warrior

April 25: Immaterial Labor

- Games of Empire, Chapter 1: Immaterial Labor: A Workers’ History of
Videogaming

April 27: Urban Violence

- Games of Empire, Chapter 6: Imperial City: Grand Theft Auto.

Conclusions
May 2: Movie: Ghost in the Shell 1 (movie will be shown in class).

May 4: Discuss Ghost in the Shell, concluding discussion

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Academic Integrity
The Cornell Code of Academic Integrity states: "Absolute integrity is expected of every
Cornell student in all academic undertakings. ... A Cornell student's submission of work
for academic credit indicates that the work is the student's own. All outside assistance
should be acknowledged, and the student's academic position truthfully reported at all
times. In addition, Cornell students have a right to expect academic integrity from each of
their peers."
URL for the student code of academic integrity:
http://www.cornell.edu/Academic/AIC.html
(Please note: there is some good information about proper citation on this site. It may be
useful if you have questions).