Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Specialized one-time graduate course offerings on topics related to the current research of school faculty of visiting professors.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Overview:

This course explores the design, use and massive implications of social media in the 21st Century. The invention of computer networks in the late 1960’s, and early 1970’s gave rise to new ways of communicating, and led to a profound social and economic paradigm shift, transcending the industrial world of machines and factory models, to what has been called the Age of KNOWLEDGE. Whereas the industrial model was based on human and machine repetition and efficiency, the Knowledge Age is based on human innovation and inventiveness. Collaboration rather than competition, democracy versus authoritarian control, and mental over mechanical skills, were to be the hallmarks of the Knowledge Age. However, since 2004 there has been a gigantic and unforeseen fork in the digital road. The concept of web 2.0 that arose in 2004 shifted the digital path from a space for free public, democratic, and artistic expression to the rise of digital media giants such as Facebook, Amazon, and Google, who have gobbled up competing media companies for increasing control of the Internet and of human rights. The current situation is staggering in terms of the growth of the digital monopolies.

Whereas the late 20th Century celebrated the possibilities of the Internet to bring about democracy and open communication on a global scale, the early 21st Century has demonstrated alarming potential for totalitarian social control. Cell phones record every movement and conversation of every individual on the planet. Robots are replacing professionals with huge implications for unemployment. The very role of human beings is challenged, as artificial super intelligence zooms towards what is known as the Singularity; estimated to occur in approximately 20 years (2035) when artificial intelligence exceeds and surpass human intelligence.

What options do human beings have? Are there forms of digital media that can increase, rather than reduce, human privacy and human rights? What forms of communication are available, and do they enhance human knowledge or technological dominance?

This course will examine and employ social media such as: forums, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and other user-generated content sites, to online collaboration and knowledge-building. Whereas much social media is being used for social marketing or datamining of personal information, the key questions in this course are: Do, or can, social media facilitate collaborative learning and knowledge-building? And if so, HOW? Which technologies? What designs? And, especially, how should discourse be moderated or curated to achieve these goals?

Approximately one-half of the classes will be conducted face-to-face (f2f), while the other half will be totally online, using and studying new media tools and their social applications.

[Co-taught with CMNS 453-4 (E100)]

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: