In the meantime you might want to familiarize yourself with what is happening in Egypt, important material related to our class discussions. ( You might begin by reading Al Jazeera and try following @acarvin, @jilliancyork, @techsoc on Twitter.)

Note: You do not need to have new blog posts for this week, as long as you updated last week.

Update: Read this article by Deen Freelon. Freelon creates a useful typography around the way people are positioning themselves in regards to the question of how the internet effects political movements.

Note: Attendance Thursday is mandatory, unless you clear it with me ahead of time.

Also you should visit the class wiki and set up a pbwiki profile. Once you have the profile set up, remember to email me letting me know what your user name and email account you set this up under is, this way you will have access and I can give you credit.

If you have volunteered to contribute to the KateModern, PromQueen, or Quarterlife pages you should plan on posting the information by next Thursday.

Update:Thanks to Bridget for sending along the YouTube link which allows you to find any of the videos with which you might be having trouble.

Update: Our class is mentioned on the KateModern blog.

Course Info:

With the rise of digital literacy, what was once marginal “geek” culture has come to dominate the social landscape. While storytelling used to take place via a relatively narrow set of channels, born digital narratives are now opening up new structural possibilities (hypertext, blog fiction, YouTube shows, digital games). Criticism has ranged from outright dismissal (“nothing has changed”) to hyperbolic (“nothing will ever be the same”). Regardless of where one takes up position along this spectrum, the now ubiquitous potential of the digital text raises two crucial questions: What/How much changes in the digital text? And perhaps more importantly, how does this move to the digital text affect us as readers? In class we will ask these questions (along with a host of others) of a variety of narrative forms. In order to adequately address these issues, we will read creative works from a variety of genres (novels, hypertext, digital games, web fiction), while supplementing our approach through the reading of critical texts. Students will produce critical and creative work for class.

Note that the syllabus lists readings about iJustine, you do not need to read these, as we will not cover them until Thursday.

I have as of 2:30 Thursday added 19?) of you to my following list, so if you are looking for classmates to follow you should go to my Twitter profile and add in some of your classmates. You don’t necessarily need to follow everyone in the class but add in at least ten to get the Twitter experience. You can also choose to follow people who are not in our class. There are several personalities on Twitter if you would like to follow them. Barack Obama or John Edwards for example, if you find others leave them in the comments.

Two other notes on Twitter. To make you Twitter experience better you should get a Twitter client for your computer or perhaps integrate it with your Facebook page. Finally, note that if you want to block people or make your tweets (posts) private Twitter enables this function.

For Tuesday read:

<free culture>” Lawrence Lessig, (online presentation)
A Great Idea Lives Forever. Shouldn’t its Copyright? Mark Helprin
Against Perpetual Copyright (Wiki Response to Helprin)
Pachbel Rant(short video)

You should also write a post on your blog about these readings. Find an article from current news and use the readings as a way to highlight the issue at stake (there are hundreds of stories about the internet and issues of copyright).