Faculty of Political Sciences University of Maria Curie-Sklodowska,

Department of Philosophy of Politics and Mass Communication

Course Title: New Media

Number of contact hours: 30
Course duration: spring semester
Lecturer: Piotr Celiński (Ph.D), see more at: www.zfpiks.politologia.pl
e-mail: piotr.celinski@umcs.pl

Program
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1. Technology and communication

Theories of technology / technological determinism / analog culture / automat
readings:
> Norman D., Being Analog, 1997 - http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/being_analog.html
> Negroponte N., Being Digital, 1995 - http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/english/books/nn/bdcont.htm

2. What is new in new media?

Defining digital / massmedia vs new media /remediation
readings:
> Manovich L., New Media from Borges to HTML, [w:] The New Media Reader ..., s. 13-25.
> New media: a critical introduction, M. Lister, J. Dovey, S. Giddings, I. Grant, K. Kelly, Routledge 2003, s. 9-
71.
> Jenkins H., Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, New York University Press 2006,
passim.

3. Interface – between human, technology and culture

Infterface culture – culture of interfaces / four types of interfaces / visual culture – virtual reality / artificial
inteligence
readings:
> Nelson T., From Computer Lib / Dream Machines, [w:] The New Media Reader ..., s. 301-338.
> Johnson S., Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate,
Perseus Books Group 1999.
> Weibel P., The World as Interface, [w:] Electronic Culture, red. T. Druckery, New York 1996.
> Weiser M., The world is not a desktop, “Interactions” January 1994.
> Engelbart D., Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, Washington 1962.

4. Cyberculture
the new frame for symbolic communication /convergence / new sense of time, place and interactions /
disinformocracy
readings:
> Dyson E., Gilder G., Keyworth G., Toffler A., Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Carta for the
Knowledge Age, Release 1.2, The Progress & Freedom Foundation 1994, http://www.pff.org/issues-
pubs/futureinsights/fi1.2magnacarta.html
> Levy P., Cyberculture, University of Minnesota Press 2001, s. 13-115.

5. Text – hypertext – cybertext

write vs print / text vs cybertext / MEMEX /open text
readings:
> Bush V., As we may think, “The Atlantic Monthly”, July 1945.
> Aarseth E., Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, Johns Hopkins University Press 1997.
> Bardini T., Bridging the Gulfs: From Hypertext to Cyberspace,
www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol3/issue2/bardini.html#Footnote1

6. Consumer vs. user

death of an author and consumer / age of user / rhizome i nomadic travelling / using vs being used

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readings:
> A Special Report on New Media, “The Economist”, April 22, 2006.
> Person of the Year 2006, “Time”, January 1, 2007.

7. Cyborg – question of postbiology and posthumanism

New anthropology of new media / screen beetwen us / Levinas and philosophy of the Face and the Other
readings:
> Turkle S., http://www.transparencynow.com/turkle.htm
> Haraway D., A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late
Twentieth Century, [w:] Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York;
1991, s.149-181. http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html

8. Networks and Internet

Network / Network of Networks - Internet / Access and the Digital Divide / Deep Web / Internet 2.0 / citizen
journalism
readings:
> Hargittai E., Open Portals or Closed Gates? Channeling Content on the World Wide Web, Princeton 2000.
> DiMaggio P., Hargittai E., Neuman W. R., Robinson J. P., Social Implications of the Internet, “Annual
Review of Sociology” nr 27/2001.
> O’Reilly T., What Is Web 2.0. Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of
Software, http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6228
> Roush W., Social Machines. Computing means connecting,
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/14664/
> Roush W., Social Networking 3.0. The third generation of social-networking technology has
hit the Web, and it’s about content as much as contacts,
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/15908/

9. Free culture
open source / creative commons / copy vs. original / pirates
readings:
> Lessig L., Free Culture, Warszawa 2005, passim.
> Lessig L., Open Code And Open Societies: Values of Internet Governance, passim.

10. Eletronic agora and other forms of digital society

Cyberdemocracy / social movements in cyberspace / cybersocieties
readings:
> Poster M., Cyberdemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere,
http://www.gold.ac.uk/difference/papers/poster.html
> Hagen M., A typology of electronic democracy,
http://www.uni-giessen.de/fb03/vinci/labore/netz/hag_en.htm

11. Digital fire is burning – digital art

Interactive art / happening / ascii / software art / net art
readings:
> Kluszczyński R. W., Sztuka mediów i sztuka multimediów, albo o dwóch złudnych analogiach /
Art of the Media and Multimedia, the Two Illusory Analogies, „Exit. Nowa sztuka w Polsce”
1997, nr 2(30).

12. Wrap-Up
Individual presentations of final projects.
Each student will develop a final project that critically examines an aspect of digital media of the
student's choice.

Course Description:
This course studies key concepts and interdisciplinary theoretical approaches to the new media ontologies.
Students will learn to critically investigate the provenance of the claims of new media theories, as well as to
confront the claims made by new media theorists with the practices and uses of new media. We will try to
answer questions like: what are new media? How do they requires us to rethink cultural, social and political

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paradigms and to develop new ones? How digital technologies reshape and redefine our relations with culture
and with others? Course will focus on defining and critically analyzing fundamental ideas and concepts of new
media ontology, such as: interactivity, hypertext, virtual reality, interface, web, cyberculture, interactive
art, visual culture, simulation.

Literature:
Aarseth E., Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, Johns Hopkins University Press 1997.
Baudrillard J., Simulacra and simulation, New York 1994.
Bolter J. D., Grusin R., Remediation: Understanding New Media, MIT Press 2001.
Bolter J. D., Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print, Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates 2001.
Burnett R., How Images Think, MIT Press 2004.
Castells M., The rise of the network society, Oxford 1996.
Davis M., The Universal Computer: The Road from Leibniz to Touring, W. W. Norton and Company 2000.
Dijk, van, J., The network society: Social aspects of new media, London 1999.
Electronic Culture, red. T. Druckery, New York 1996.
Fidler R. F., Mediamorphosis: Understanding New Media, Thousand Oaks 1997.
First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, red. N. Wardrip-Fruin, P. Harrigan, MIT Press
2004.
Fiske J., Understanding Popular Culture, London 1989.
Flusser V., Towards a Philosophy of Photography, London 2000.
Gender, race, and class in media. A text reader, red. G. Dines, J. Hume, Sage 2003.
Glynn K., Tabloid culture, London 2000.
Habermas J., The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Cambridge 1989.
Hansen M. B. N., New Philosophy for New Media, MIT Press 2004.
Hyper/Text/Theory, red. G. P. Landow, The Johns Hopkins University Press 1994.
Internet Culture, red. D. Porter, New York 1997.
Johnson S., Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate,
Perseus Books Group 1999.
Kellner D., Media Culture, New York 1995.
Kroker A. & M., Hacking The Future – stories for the flesh-eating 90’s, Montreal 2001.
Lévy P., Cyberculture, University of Minnesota Press 2001.
Lister M., Dovey J., Giddings S., Grant I., Kelly K., New Media: A Critical Introduction, London 2003.
Manovich L., The Language of New Media, MIT Press 2001.
Mayer P., Computer Media and Communication: a Reader, Oxford 1999.
McLuhan M., Understanding Media, New York 1964.
Multimedia. From Wagner to Virtual Reality, red. R. Packer, K. Jordan, London, New York 2001.
Nelson T., Literary Machines, Sausalito 1980.
New Media. 1740-1915, red. L. Gitelman, G. Pingree, MIT 2004.
Rheingold H., The Virtual Community, Massachussetts 1993.
Rheingold H., Virtual Reality: The Revolutionary Technology Of Computer-Generated Artificial Worlds - And
How It Promises To Transform Society, New York 1992.
Rush M., New Media in Late 20th-Century Art (World of Art), Thames & Hudson 1999.
Stevenson N., Understanding Media Cultures. Social Theory and Mass Communication, Sage Publications
1995.
Storey J., An introduction to cultural theory and popular culture, Prentice Hall 1997.
The Cybercultures Reader, red. D. Bell, B. M. Kennedy, Routledge 2001.
The Digital Dialectic. New Essays On New Media, red. P. Lunenfeld, MIT 2000.
The New Media Book, red. D. Harris, London 2002.
The New Media Reader, red. N. Wardrip-Fruin, N. Montfort, MIT 2003.
The Virilio Reader, red. J. Der Derian, Blackwell 1998.
Vilém Flusser. Writings, red. A. Strohl, University of Minnesota Press 2004.
Virilio P., The Information Bomb, New York 2001.
Virilio P., The Vision Machine, Bloomington 1994.