INF2198H
Critical Histories of Information Technologies
Winter 2012
Students who want to contact the instructor by email should send their
messages from their Utormail addresses and include the course code
(“INF2198”) in the subject line. Please expect a response within 2
business days. (If you do not hear back within 2 days, please resend
your message.)
Students are encouraged to make use of office hours.
Course Catalogue Description
“This seminar approaches information and communication technologies
from critical and historical perspectives. We will investigate
theories of the relations among technology, information, ideology,
culture, and social structure, as well as methods for studying those
relations. First, we will survey the available theories and methods
for understanding large scale technological systems, including the
social construction of technology, technological determinism, feminist
technology studies, and the political economy of information and
communication. We will ask about the interests, motives, and tactics
of news media, pop culture producers, amateurs, universities,
corporations, and governments in promoting, sustaining, and
interpreting information and communication systems. Finally, we will
ask how information systems mediate, alter, or entrench power
relations and cultural practices. While our focus will be on media and
information technologies, more theoretical or methodological readings
will necessarily cover other systems. Case studies may include
investigations of writing, the printing press, industrialized
printing, telegraphy, telephony, computing, and the internet.”
Assignments and Grading
The grading scheme is subject to revision until the first day of class.
Class Discussion and Memos
Contribution to Class Discussion — 20%
The students are expected to be present in class and will be graded
for their contribution to the class discussion.
Please be advised that contribution does not
mean attendance. (Of course, you cannot contribute without
being present.) Students who attend the class but remain silent will
earn no credit. Nor, however, does it mean
simply speaking a lot. Rather, students are expected to come to class prepared, actively
listen to what is being said by others and then make contributions to
the discussion that take advantage of their own understanding of the
readings and of what has been said up to that point.
Students who have difficulty speaking in public should see the
instructor early in the semester, so that we could discuss possible
remedies.
During most weeks class discussion will follow a structure within which each student will
take one of the following three roles: the chair, a panelist, or a
regular participant. Each student will be asked to pick one week
during which they will serve as the “chair” for the discussion. The
chair will prepare a written memo and a list of questions based on
memos submitted by other students (see below) and will present those at the
beginning of the class. Additionally, 3–5 students will serve as
“panelists” for the discussion. (Each student will be asked to be a
panelist four times during the semester.) After the chair’s
introduction, the panelists will spend 30–40 minutes discussing the
questions asked by the chair, with the rest of the class serving as
the audience. After that, the discussion will be open to all students
present in class (the “regular participants”).
One of the classes will be dedicated to discussion of paper proposals
and will follow a different structure. (See below.)
Memos — 20%
For all weeks with assigned readings, the students will prepare “memos”
on the readings assigned for that week. Each memo should be no longer
than 1 page and should be formatted in accordance with this template:
memo_template.doc, memo_template.odt,
memo_template.rft.
The purpose of the memos is to help you make better sense of the readings
and to increase the quality of the in-class discussion by ensuring
that all students arrive to class having done the readings and having
spent some time thinking about them.
Each memo should:
- identify the central issue (or issues) in this week’s readings;
- identify the points on which the authors agree (if applicable);
- identify the points on which the authors disagree (if applicable);
- state and explain your position on one of the core issues;
- suggest three questions for the class discussion (provide a brief
explanation of your questions if necessary).
Each student must submit 10 memos
during the semester. In other words, you can skip one.
The memos should be completed and shared with all other students (via
email, as PDF files) by noon on Monday of each week.
The student serving as the chair that week will then be responsible for
reading all the memos and producing a one page aggregate memo and a list
of questions for discussion.
(All students are encouraged to read all memos, however, especially the panelists.)
Please note that the memos must strictly be submitted on time to receive full credit.
Memos submitted after the Monday at noon deadline but before the class will get half credit.
(Such memos should be printed out and brought to class in addition to being emailed to other students.)
Memos not submitted by the start of the class
will not be accepted under any circumstances. There will be no exceptions to this rule.
(Students who fail to submit a memo on time on a given week should focus their efforts on the next week’s readings.)
Term Paper
Each student will write a term paper exploring a particular topic in
the history of information technology. There are three deliverables
related to this term paper, jointly worth 60% of your course grade.
Paper Proposal — 10%
Prior to developing the paper, each student will prepare a paper
proposal.
The main text of the proposal should be up to 2 pages long and should
answer the following questions:
-
What is the topic that the paper will focus on? (In particular, make
it clear what technology, time period, and places you want to write
about.)
-
Why is this topic interesting in the context of this course?
-
What claims do you expect to make in this paper and how do you
expect to support them?
Your proposal should also include an annotated bibliography of the
sources you intend to use. Each source should be accompanied by a
brief description, stating what it is about and how you plan to use
it. You do not need to be deeply familiar with all the sources at
this point, but you should have a plan as to what you are going to do with this source.
Paper proposals are due by 13:10 on February 28.
Please bring four copies of your proposal to class.
(Three of the copies are for your reviewers, one is for the instructor.)
Late proposals will be subject to the standard late
policy and will not be handed out for
review.
Paper Proposal Review — 10%
You will share your paper proposal with three other students and will
receive three proposals in return. You will then be asked to write a
review of each proposal. The reviews should be constructive in their
focus and aim to help the author of each proposal improve their
paper. In particular, even if you find the author’s central argument
dubious, your review should try to assist the author in strengthening
this argument rather than explaining to them why their argument is wrong.
The reviews should be 1–2 pages long and can include a
bibliography (if appropriate). If you include a bibliography, do not
count it towards the page limit.
During the class discussion of the paper proposals one of the
reviewers will present the proposals and the other two reviewers will
make their comments after that. (The authors will not be presenting
their own proposals.)
The reviews are due at 13:10 on March 6.
Please bring two copies of each review to class.
(One copy goes to the author, another one is for the instructor.)
Late reviews will be subject to the standard late
policy.
Final Term Paper — 40%
The final deliverable is a paper of 6,000–8,000 words, due at the end
of the semester. The papers will be shared with other students and
will be evaluated by the instructor according to the following
criteria:
-
Use of sources. The paper should be based on substantial
research — you should plan to drawing on academic books and
articles, not on blogs or Wikipedia. The sources need to be used and
documented in an appropriate way. In particular:
-
Use citations to support your claims.
-
Give credit where credit is due.
-
Do not misrepresent your sources.
-
Pick one citation style and use it consistently. (If you do not have
a citation style you are strongly committed to, please use APA.)
-
See the following handout for more information:
Citing Wikipedia.
-
Quality of the argument. The paper should present a coherent and
original argument. In particular:
-
The paper should not merely summarize the sources, but rather
should present an argument, i.e., make claims and provide support for them.
This argument should be your own. You should be able to summarize the point of paper in a
singe sentence that starts with “I argue that...” You should the
be able to explain how your argument is different from those
presented in the literature you have read. Your argument should
ideally be interesting and even provocative, but not outrageous.
(In other words, once a reader understands your claims, they should be
interested in seeing how you are going to defend them, rather than either yawning
or throwing your paper away as a crackpot theory.)
-
You should make it clear to the reader what your argument
is. Further, they should be able to understand the essence of
your argument without actually reading your entire
paper. Stating your claims in the first paragraph and restating
them in the conclusion is usually a good idea.
-
You should make it clear to the reader why they should care about your argument.
Link your claims to larger issues.
-
The argument needs to be developed in your paper step by step. A
reader who is sceptical of your argument at the outset should be
moved towards agreement (or at least towards taking your claim
more seriously than initially).
-
Your reader should be guided through your argument. Make it clear to the reader what you are doing and why. Don’t expect them to just figure it out.
-
Quality of writing. The paper should be well written. Being well
written means your use of language should not stand in the way of
the reader’s comprehension of your text, either by obfuscating the
meaning or by drawing the reader’s attention from the content of your
writing to its form. In particular:
-
The paper should be written in complete and grammatical English
sentences and should be free of typos and spelling mistakes.
-
The paper should consist of paragraphs, normally 100–500 words
in length, with each paragraph representing a well defined unit
of meaning. In other words, it should be easy for the reader to
see what idea is carried by each paragraph. Further, the point of
the paragraph should be clear from the first few sentences. This
allows the reader to decide whether they need to read this
particular paragraph carefully (if at all). A reader who is
following your argument may read the first sentence, understand
where you are going, nod, and move to the next point. A reader
who is sceptical of where you are going with your argument (or
is struggling to understand it) may read the first sentence and
realize that this particular paragraph requires a lot of
attention. Paragraphs should follow each other logically. It
should be easy to the reader to understand why a particular
paragraph follows the previous one.
-
It is usually a good idea to break up your paper into sections
and use section headings. Superhuman writers can get by without
section headings, because they can grab the reader’s attention
with the first sentence and carry it through the paper. The
mortals, however, should expect that the reader’s attention is
going to wonder off at times. Section headings help the reader
keep track of where they are.
-
The paper should be written in a professional style targeting an
educated audience. This means that you should avoid colloquial
features (contractions, slang, informal grammar). You should use
vocabulary that is appropriate for an educated audience. Ideally,
your choice of vocabulary should be such that your fellow MI
students would neither puzzled by the words you use nor find
your vocabulary condescending. The same applies to sentence
structure. Avoid sentences that are so complicated that the
reader would have to read them twice to find the main clause. On
the other hand, remember that you are writing for adults, not
for children.
-
Use active voice. In addition to being much easier to comprehend,
active voice encourages the writer to name the actors and thus avoid
ambiguity and conceptual muddle. (A sentence such as “the printing
press was developed in...” leaves it unclear who actually did the
developing.) This applies to using yourself as a subject. “I argue that...”
is much preferred to “It is argued that...” (If you prefer,
you can write “We argue” or “This paper argues,” though both really are
silly.)
-
Your writing should be concise. Make sure that every sentence is
there for a reason. Avoid saying the same thing multiple times.
A 6,000 word paper that says the same thing as an 8,000 word paper
would likely get a better grade.
The due date for the final papers is going to be announced later, but
will be some time during the week of April 10.
Late papers will be subject to the standard late
policy.
Normally, students will be required to submit
the term paper to TurnItIn for a review
of textual similarity and detection of possible plagiarism. In doing
so, students will allow their essays to be included as source
documents in the Turnitin.com reference database, where they will be
used solely for the purpose of detecting plagiarism. The terms that
apply to the University’s use of the Turnitin.com service are
described on the Turnitin.com web site.
Students who do not wish to use TurnItIn for submitting their work
should approach the instructor to discuss alternative ways to
establish the originality of the paper. This discussion needs to
happen before the student begins working on the paper.
For information on how to use TurnItIn, please see this handout:
turnitin_instructions.pdf.
Late Assignments and Extensions
You are expected to complete assignments on time. Assignment not
submitted by the exact time when their are due will be considered
late. (E.g., “17:00” means “17:00”, not “17:05.”)
Late memos will recieve half of the credit if
submitted before the beginning of class. Memos not submitted by the
time the class begins will not be accepted at all.
For all other assignments there will be a penalty of
half a grade (e.g. from A to A–) for any assignment
not submitted on time, with an
an additional half-grade penalty deducted for any further 24 hours that the assignment is late.
Work that is not handed in one week (168 hours)
after it was due will not be accepted.
Graduating students are advised that late
submission of the term paper can make it impossible for the final
grade to be issued in time for graduation.
