Information, Images and Inequality

SOC 425

 

Projects                                                                                                            Prof. Stephen Adair

Suggested topics and due dates                                                                Spring 2003

 

Over the course of the semester, you will need to complete four projects (for papers – I envision about 4 or 5 pages for the projects; for those using other media, I will expect a similar amount of work). You may combine two or possibly three projects into a longer one, as long as I have given approval prior to the due date of the first project.

 

Many of the projects, I expect, will take the form of written essays or short research papers (of four to five double-spaced typed pages), but you are free to use other media, including the making of a visual essay, a class presentation, a video, a web page, a cartoon, or other means to communicate and share what you have learned.*

 

Information for the projects can be gathered from any number of sources, including assigned books, other books and journal articles, websites, systematic observations, interviews, magazines, photographs, video games, etc.  Please be sure to document all your sources.  For many of the projects listed below, the web may be your important resource.  Please document material taken from websites.  Do not plagiarize, that is, do not pass off other people’s work as your own.  In general, I want you to pursue issues that interest you.  While all topics not listed below, must be checked out with me before handing them in, my only requirement is that the projects you select involve critical thinking on the social issues and implications that reside at the intersections of technology, culture, and the accumulation of wealth in the contemporary world.

 

Generally I expect people will produce work on their own.  If you have an idea for a project that would work best as a group project involving two or three of you, I would be happy to talk with you about it.

 

The due dates for the projects are: 2/18; 3/11; 4/10 and 5/1.  I will accept late work, but all work handed in late will initially have a full grade deducted (an A becomes a B); if the project is not completed by the time the next project is due two full grades will be deducted (an A becomes a C).  If you intend to do a longer project that will count for two, you will need to get approval for the longer project before the first due date, or half the project will be considered late.  All work (with the possible exception of class presentations) may be redone (i.e. rewritten) provided that a completed version of the project was originally handed in on time.

 

The list below is for topics due on 2/18, although many would be appropriate for projects due on other dates. 

 

*(Note: This is not a course in new media skills, so I might be able to provide some rudimentary instruction in how to create web pages, use the department’s digital video camera (which you might be able to borrow), create a Power-point demonstration, etc., but my skills in these areas are limited.  Also, there is a website for this class: from www.sociology.ccsu.edu/adair follow the links -- anyone who would like to put items together for a website, I would be pleased to publish as a link from our course page or provide the server space for a web page.

 

 

1. Write a profile of a person or an organization involved in the making of hacker culture. (Consider for example ARPA or DARPA, Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Tim Berners-Lee).

 

2. Compare and contrast the view of hacker culture as it is presented in Castell’s The Internet Galaxy and Thomas’s article (pp. 202-211) in Gauntlett.

 

3. On page 37, Stone writes that her book is about “cyborg habitats” and on page 65 she tells us that she is writing “fables” and “origin myths” about this new habitat.  Investigate some cyborg habitat or projected cyborg habitat on your own.  Identify features of the proposed habitat that alter the general terms and conditions of human life. Some examples include

 

4. Cheung (reading 4 in Gauntlett) discusses presentation of self on personal homepages.  Perform your own study on personal homepages and report on the central similarities and differences that are associated with their construction.  That is, how do people elect to present themselves through their own homepages.

 

5.  Investigate, describe and consider a new organization or a political group (or groups) that is challenging new forms of ownership over intellectual property.  See the website for this course for some examples.

 

6.  Consider and develop the tension between sovereignty systems and exchange systems in the development of a specific technology that uses a form of digital reproduction.

 

7. Investigate, consider and describe what is being sold at Corbis corp (see www.corbis.com).  Use the products being sold through Corbis corp. to reflect on the tension between sovereignty systems and exchange systems.

 

8.  Your own idea that is related to digital culture.  Talk to me about it.