IDS 4930  Technology and Culture

Laura Barrett (MHC 147)

        Dan White (MHC 146)

 

 

Course Description:  In the late twentieth century, we tend to equate technology with sophisticated engineering and complicated gadgetry.  Technology allows stealth bombers and super computers to run.  The wheel, such a staple of modern life, hardly seems complex enough to be called a technological wonder, but it changed the course of human development.  During the semester, we will examine various kinds of technology, including such imaginary ones as magic, and consider their impact on culture.  Subjects to be explored will include philosophy, literature, medicine, transportation, war, nuclear development, journalism, photography, film, visual arts, music, and computerization.

 

Prerequisite: Honors Standing

 

Required Texts: Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis; William Shakespeare, The Tempest; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur=s Court;  Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology; Thomas Pynchon, Vineland; Marshall McLuhan, War and Peace in the Global Village; William Gibson, Neuromancer; Don DeLillo, White Noise. If books are not in bookstore, you may purchase them directly through www.amazon.com or http://www.barnesandnoble.com.

 

Course Policies:  Attendance, promptness and class participation are mandatory.  Excessive absences will result in a lower grade.  It is essential that everyone be on time for class and remain for the scheduled period.

 

Grades will be determined as follows:

Three response papers (300-500 words)         30%

           One formal essay (1250 to 1500 words)          40%

Oral report*                                                     20%

Participation                                                    10%

 

*Beginning in the sixth week of the semester, students will begin presenting collaborative oral reports.  Assignments will be made in the first few weeks of the semester.

 

Plagiarism: You must acknowledge the source of any idea in your paper that is not your own in a footnote at the end of the paper. Any words directly quoted from a book must be put in quotation marks and footnoted.  Failure to follow this procedure constitutes plagiarism, a very serious academic offense which will result in failing this course.

 

Please note: If you have a physical, psychiatric/emotional, medical or learning disability that may affect your ability to carry out the work of the course or that will require extra time on examinations, please notify me in the first two weeks of the semester so that we can make appropriate arrangements.  I would also urge you to contact the staff in the Disabled Student Services office (DSS), Humanities 133 (632-6748).  DSS will review your concerns and determine with you what accommodations are necessary and appropriate.  All information and documentation of disability is confidential. 

 

1/13     Introduction to class: Film: Forbidden Planet, discussion.

 

1/20     Bacon, The New Atlantis; Shakespeare, The Tempest; ancillary readings: Francis Bacon Online; Bacon's Great Instauration; Bacon's Advancement of Learning; Shakespeare’s Plays Online; Shakespeare Links; Scientific backdrop: The Ptolemaic Cosmos;  The Copernican Revolution; Web Resources for the study of Modernity ; Bacon “as” Shakespeare, a list of “his” works, including some masques.

 

1/27     Shelley, Frankenstein; Donna Haraway, AA Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,@ and “The Promises of Monsters” online at Hyperlink to Haraway; Reaction Paper Due.

           

2/3       Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur=s Court

 

2/10     Chaplin, Modern Times ; Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"; Photography by Eugene Atget (cited by Benjamin); Theodor Adorno, "Chaplin Times Two".  Film, photography and painting: Raphael, Miraculous Draught of Fishes; Twain revisited: see Hank Morgan’s comment on this “cartoon” in Connecticut Yankee, pp. 44-45;  also cited by Benjamin as precursors to film:  Dadaist art by Hans Arp (1867-1966), Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and others: Dada and Surrealism; poetry by August Stramm (1874-1915), in the original auf Deutsch: a poem and a note on Benjamin’s Spielraum.

  

2/17   T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land;  also see The Waste Land Online ;  Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent"; Martin Heidegger, AThe Question Concerning Technology;@ Marx, The Machine and the Garden (selections); Mumford, Technics and Civilization (selections); Siddhartha Gotama Buddha, The Fire Sermon; Oral Presentations Begin.

 

2/24     Fritz Lang, Metropolis;

 

3/2      Group presentations;

            Poetry:   

Hart Crane’s “Proem” -- http://oldpoetry.com/poetry/17992

Hart Crane’s “Chaplinesque” -- http://oldpoetry.com/poetry/17982

Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck” -- http://www.nortonpoets.com/ex/richadiving.htm

Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” -- http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/frost-mending.html

Wallace Stevens’ “Anecdote of a Jar” -- http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/stevens-ancedote.html

William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow” -- http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/wcw-red-wheel.html

William Carlos Williams’ “The Yachts” -- http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Poetry/Williams/The_Yachts

Wilfred Owens’ “Dulce et Decorum Est” -- http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/LostPoets/Dulce.html

Randall Jarrell’s “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” --http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~richie/poetry/html/poem43.html

Arthur Rimbaud’s “Metropolitan” -- http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Nook/2689/rimbaud/metropolitan.html

Arthur Rimbaud’s “Bridges” -- http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Nook/2689/rimbaud/bridges.html

            e. e. cummings’ “pity this busy monster, manunkind”

 

3/8-3/13  Spring Break

 

3/16     Pynchon, AEntropy,@ (on reserve in our library, in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, vol. 2, pp. 2179 ff);  NYT Review of  “Entropy”; Vineland; some useful notes:  Lyrics to "Frenesi" by Artie Shaw;  Discography of Artie Shaw;  "Wachtet Auf" by J.S. Bach--lyrics;  "Wachtet Auf" electronic version; The Bach Connection, online music; Isaiah 2:4: KJV: “And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Pynchon Criticism Online; "Smoking Dope With Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir" ; Babies of Wackiness: A Reader's Guide to Vineland; Weblinks for Vineland; readings from The Education of Henry Adams, chapter XXV: “The Dynamo and The Virgin,” as well as the last three chapters of the book if you have time, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV. 

Reaction Paper due by Friday.

 

3/23    McLuhan, War and Peace in the Global Village; Wiener, “Newtonian and Bergsonian Time,” from Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1948; 2nd edition 1961), ch. 1, on reserve; Arthur Kroker, "Digital Humanism: the Processed World of Marshall McLuhan"; Georges Seurat A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte 1884-86 .

Thesis, opening paragraph, outline for final essay due.

 

3/30    Scott, Blade Runner

 

4/6      Gibson, Neuromancer;  

 

4/13    De Jarnatt, Miracle Mile; Reaction Paper 3 Due.

 

4/20  DeLillo, White Noise, Willa Cather, AConsequences,@ Trachtenberg, Classic Essays on Photography (selections); Jean Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulations"

 

4/27  Precession of Simulacra@; in addition see Baudrillard on the Web

         Final Essay Due