SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION
CMNS 353-4

Ted Hamilton	Summer 2003
HC Office: TBA; c/o 604-291-5212	Harbour Centre Day
e-mail: tedh@sfu.ca

 

SOCIAL CONTEXTS OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Pre-requisites:

CMNS 253; and CMNS 261 or 362

Description:

This course asks students to consider a range of issues around information technology and the growth and development of “information societies”. This semester, the course will focus on issues of identity, democracy and the self, specifically as these relate to ethical evaluations of technology and forms of social development and organisation in global information societies. The course primarily hopes to explore how the relations between technology, trends in social development and new modes of communication have generated a range of problems and questions for addressing contemporary social, political and environmental issues. These issues revolve around the challenges and promises information technologies pose for the concepts of self, identity, community, work, political power and the shape and function of social institutions in the current round of globalisation.

We will assume that technologies are more than their material, technical manifestations, but also have a metaphorical or symbolic dimension through which they are integrated into daily life and social practice and organisation. In this sense, technology relates to the formation of self-understandings inasmuch as the self can be understood as the product of processes of meaning-making established in relation to the world. From an introduction to the idea of technologies and identities as historical (and historically inter-related) constructs, we will look at various spheres of organisation and practice in the information society – the global economy; the structure and nature of work; cultural production and communication; information technology and consumer society; surveillance, privacy and individuality; citizenship, democracy and the erosion of the state; the transformation of higher education; virtuality and environmental ethics; intellectual property, copyright, ownership of information; biotechnology and the informatisation of life; the formation of new communicational and new community networks; etc.

The academic material on the reading list will be complimented by the classic dystopian novel We, considered a predecessor of Orwell’s 1984. This is meant as a way of negotiating some of the issues raised with respect to the course material, as well as to put issues of democracy, identity and the self in the context of wider and perennial issues in the politics of technology and the self.

Readings:

Course Package to be available at the bookstore;
Yevgeny Zamyatin (1929). We.

Assignments:

Two short reflection papers (2-3pp) (on aspects of We) 10%
Mid-Term examination 15%
Group Project (10-12pp) 25%
Final Essay (10 pp) 20%
Final exam 20%
Participation 10%

The School expects that the grades awarded in this course will bear some reasonable relation to established university-wide practices with respect to both levels and distribution of grades. In addition, the School will follow Policy T10.02 with respect to “Intellectual Honesty” and “Academic Discipline” (see the current Calendar, General Regulations section).