Required in-class Exam at 1 p.m. on
Saturday October 4 in Student
Center, North Conference room.
I will sign onto chat most evenings this week, for a few minutes
at least. Chat may be especially active Friday night. But
to be sure to get an answer to a question for me, please post it to the
Discussion List for
Questions.
Even if you don't post a question, you may find it useful to read the
answers to other students' questions.
There will be no new reading this
week, review the past week's readings for the in-class exam. The
test will cover everything we've done in the first weeks. A
review crossword puzzle is available in SAKAI/resources.
The in-class test will take no more than 45 minutes. After that,
we will discuss writing for the WEB and your research projects. I
have added some comments to your group pages (usually in red).
For an outstanding example, see the Futurists
group's page. Many of you need to narrow down your
projects. It is usually a good idea to make three main points or
use three main examples. See TJ Walker's video clip on the "Rule
of Three". Readings on writing for the WEB are on the Week
Five page.
Review
Guide for the First Midterm
Cyberspace and Society
The first
reading
gives some highlights of the history of the Internet: its origins
in
the Defense Department, the visionaries who say it as a global nervous
system. Vannevar Bush's memex was an early vision of what later
became
a personal computer. J.C.R. Licklider visioned the use of
computers as
communication devices, providing visuals as well as text, and
simultaneous interaction with people in different laces.
The Global
Brain video
gives a utopian vision based more on evolutionary theory and Russell's
spiritual journey than on the technological developments that excited
Licklider and Vannevar Bush. Study questions are at the end of
the week
one page and will not be repeated here.
The Internet
and Everyday Life
article divides the history of the Internet from its origin in 1969 to
an academic curiosity in the 1980s to mainstream use in the 1990s when
internet communities such as WELL
developed. It argues that a second age began after the doc.com
crash
in 2000. The Internet lost its glamour, but became embedded in
everyday life as it is today. Social problems such as inequality
have
their counterpart in the "digital divide". We may become more
segmented rather than united, "glocalization" instead of McLuhan's
vision of the global village. It ends with some speculation about
future trends: wireless portability, personalization, globalized
ubiquitious portabiity. These are based on an environmental
scanning
of developments underway when the article was written (in 2003 I think)
and many are further advanced today.
The Methods
and Approaches of Future Studies
article explains trend analysis, cyclical pattern analysis,
environmental scanning, scenario writing, technological forecasting,
backcasting and visioning. These methods can be put into two
categories: quantitative and qualitative, and good analysts use
many
or most of them. You should understand each of these
Ray Kurzweil is a trend analyist and visionary. The
six
epochs in the first chapter from his book The Singularity is Near (in
Sakai/Resources) are a good framework for understanding his
views. The
Singularity is a predicted point in time when computers will exceed
human intelligence and technical change will be so fast it will appear
instantaneous to humans. He bases this on a mathematical
projection of
exponential trends which he explains. You should understand the
difference between linear, exponential and cyclical trends and be able
to recognize them from plots on a graph. If you have trouble with
this, type "linear trend" "exponential trend" and "cyclical
trend" in Google Images
and look at
some pictures. The Big Question is a scenario giving a vision of
life
after the Singularity. Science fiction provides many of the best
scenarios of long-term futures.
My notes
on McLuhan are already a review guide to his writings, so I won't
repeat them here.