Democracy, Governance, and the Digital Network

For an example of Wikipedia at its best visit the rapidly changing article on the Burmese Protests. The military juanta in has a long record of violent response to uprisings. With traditional media often ignoring, or not having access to information in Burma the power of the Smart Mob has taken over.

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For Tuesday, you should read: – “The Great Seduction” from the Cult of Amateur (course reader) – “The amorality of Web 2.0” Nicholas Carr – “The Good, the Bad, and the Web 2.0” from Wall Street Journal . Following your reading, you should Post by Monday to your blog about this reading. For this post [...]

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There is no assigned reading for Thursday, instead you need to either substantially edit an existing Wikipedia page, or write a new one. Following this assignment, you need to post to your blog. In the post link to the article you wrote, or edited and talk about the decisions you made, and what led you [...]

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Read: The following are short and should not take too much of time (30 minutes). “Wikipedia” from Wikipedia – “The Book Stops Here” from Wired Magazine – “All the News That’s Fit to Print” New York Times – “Heavy Metal Umlat” (video) Write: Now that structure is up add stuff to the MidTerm Wiki.

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For Thursday you need to read about Assignment Zero. There is a great deal written about this on the web, just try a google search and you will see. But, at the very least you should read the following pieces for our discussion. Note, this project has come to a close, so we can’t participate, [...]

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As a demonstration of the Panopticon and related to the Smart Mobs assignment for next week, consider the following: A professor at Pitzer now teaches a class on and thru YouTube. In other words all of the assignments, class meetings, etc are posted for all to see. The class page can be found here on [...]

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Read: Finish reading Smart Mobs. It is probably best to do this first as it will make your second task easier. Write: Post to your individual blog about Smart Mobs. Find an example from another blog that highlights/complicates/raises new questions about Rheingold’s argument. Consider that he wrote this 5 years ago so much has already [...]

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Reading: Chapters 4-6 in Smart Mobs. Pay attention to the examples that he uses as we will spend more time discussing these than we did on Tuesday. Write: A class wiki is up to help you prepare and collaborate on the midterm. Write, or don’t write, as you see fit.

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One of the things that Rheingold discusses is the issue of “spectrum” specifically “spectrum regulation.” This is a fairly complicated political/historical issue. You might want to check out the following video, which is a slide capture of Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig. Lessig is well known for his participation in this debate, and we will [...]

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Read: Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold, Introduction and Chapters 1-3. Make sure you read the introduction as it makes the project clear, and he has some important points in this part. Don’t forget to bring the book to class as you will need it. Write: Write a blog post in the same manner as your [...]

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