For next Wednesday read the first three chapters of The Nature of the Book.

Update: You should have received an email from me indicating your group, and containing the email addresses of the others in your group. Coordinate setting up a website between now and next class. No need to post. The idea is just to get the site up.

Second email me by Friday at noon the following:

• Have the subject line be EMAC 6361.
• Your preferred email address. This will be the one I share with others in your group.
• Your Twitter ID. If you don’t have a Twitter account set one up. The hashtag for this class is #emac6361.
• Once you have joined Twitter follow, @therefore, @academicdave, @emacutd, @emacadvise.
• Your top three choices (in order of preference) for your group project. (See the list below.)
• Your skill set (i.e. video, animation, 3D modeling, 2D drawing, project management, writing, web design, etc.).
• Anything else I might need to know for placing you in a group.

Don’t email me this info though if you are planning on dropping the class. Joining a group commits you to the rest of the semester. Serious, your classmates count on you, and joining a group just to drop it in a few weeks is a serious a__hole move, that and if you join a group and drop leaving your classmates hanging I’ll take away your birthday (I know people).

Choose from three of the following. Note if you pick one of the topics that has a subcategory, in parenthesis, specify which subcategory, or just indicate that you would be interested in any subcateogy.

• Libraries
• Museums
• Government (Advocacy Groups, Political Groups, Government Services, Representative Democracy)
• Journalism
• Art/Enterntaiment (Film, Fine Art, Art Museums/Galleries, or something else?)
• Universities/Higher Education
• K-12 Education
• If you think of something else email me and I’ll add it to the list, but do it fast so others will join you.

Once you have done this I will create groups, and email you all notifying you of your group, from there you can get working. By the end of the weekend though you should set up your group’s URL, and post it to the comment section of this blog. No need to develop the site fully just the URL will do for now.

The syllabus, or at least the print version, is done. Feel free to download and take a look. This is the “official” version as required by law, but the information here on the site, Reading List, Course Description, etc. is far more up to date.

Also take a look at the Class Project Guidelines as it will give you a sense of the direction of the course.

Class starts Wednesday. Currently it is scheduled for the Mac Lab, but this will probably change, so stay tuned.

For those of you anxious to get started on next semester, or perhaps those who just want to buy the books for the Spring, below is a list of the readings.

• The Nature of the Book Adrain Johns
• The Future of the Book Geoffrey Nunberg
• Remediation Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin
• Wealth of Networks Yochai Benkler (You can download this book for free.)
• Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages Alex Wright
• Everything is Miscellaneous David Weinberger
• Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in a Hybrid Economy by Lawrence Lessig
• Paper Machine by Jacques Derrida (We will only be reading two articles from this book, so you will be able to get it off eReserve. But regardless it is a good book and if you have a chance pick up a copy.)
• Also we will be talking about Rip: A Remix Manifesto so if you want a movie to watch over break you might just watch this. It is entertaining, informative, and you get to pick how much you want to pay for it.

(This isn’t 100% final, more like 95.2%.)

Okay, so I created a single RSS feed for all of your blogs. You can view each others blogs by going to this page and clicking the tab that says list. From there you can grab the RSS feed and add it to your own reader if you would like. Later I will create a page on this site to display it, but for now this works.

This blog is now for History and Theory of Emerging Media, ATEC6V81, Spring ‘09. To clear up any confusion the class is worth 3 credits. More will be posted soon here re: syllabus and readings, in case you should want to order books ahead of time. Stay tuned.

If I were a poet I would find some clever lines to supply here, but I am not so . . .

All grades have been submitted and if you would like your paper back just email me and I can arrange a way to get it to you.

See you around ATEC next semester.

Place your thoughts on the Ong reading below. Try to keep them focused on a single issue the text raises with which you would like to engage more during class.

Update: To avoid any confusion this is the book you should have for two weeks from now. The title is The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe ISBN 978-0-521-60774-2. (384 pages.)

Here is the first post for this blog. On Thursday the 28th of August we will meet for the second time and discuss Howard Rheingold’s Smart Mobs. After reading the book please post your response/question to the this post by clicking the comments below. Your comment should be 300-400 words, and be submitted by Tuesday 12:01 AM. This will give me a chance to read them and prepare class before our discussion on Thursday. If you want more information and news on Smart Mobs you can check the Smart Mob blog.

Note: Later this week I will post a sample comment/question to provide a bit of context/direction . . .

Note II: Off-Campus Bookstore Directions

No this is not a “your momma” joke. For Monday read The Prologue, Parts I & III of Katherine N. Hayles My Mother was a Computer. Leave your comments/questions below. If you send me an email after Thursday I can respond with feedback from your final projects as my review of them will be done at that time (if not you will get them back in class on Monday).

Adam Brackin will be here to discuss all things ARG.

For class begin by reading this Quick Start Guide and then the wikipedia article Alternative Reality Games. Next you should sign up for an account and take a look around Adam’s current game, Conspiracy Asylum. If you are interested his previous game was called Deus City.

Once you have a sense of what ARGs are all about, you should read two short articles by Jane McGonigal (she is one of the creators behind the famous I Love Bees). “This Is Not a Game: Immersive Aesthetics & Collective Play” and “The Puppet Master Problem” are both available for download from her website. Finally, you might want to take a look The Lost Ring her latest game, designed for the Olympics-this is a high quality production project with people participating from numerous countries and at least eight different languages.

If you are looking for more information on ARGs the two most important internet sites are ARGNet and unfiction.