Week 1: Introductions (Jan 24th)

Reading for today:

• David Nye, "Technology" 

Questions for today:

• Why study technology? 
• What is the relationship between technology & culture? 
• What sorts of machines, devices, and practices 'count' when we talk about technology in the 21st century?

Week 2: Conceptualizing Technology (Jan 31st)

Readings for today:

• Leo Marx, "Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept," Social Research, Vol. 64 (1997): 965–88.
• Paul E. Ceruzzi, “A Large Canvas," in Melvin Kranzberg and Carroll W. Pursell Jr., eds., Technology in Western Civilization. (NOTE: this article looks at the emergence of the "History of Technology" as an academic discipline and field of inquiry). 
• Langdon Winner, "Do Artifacts Have Politics?," Daedalus, Vol. 109, No. 1, Modern Technology: Problem or Opportunity? (Winter, 1980), pp. 121-136.

For further reading & research:

• Raymond Williams, "The Technology and the Society" in Television: Technology and Cultural Form, pp. 1-25.
• Caroll Pursell, "Technologies as Cultural Practice and Production," Technology and Culture 41:3, 2010.
• Langdon Winner, "The Gloves Come off: Shattered Alliances in Science and Technology Studies," Social Text, No. 46/47, Science Wars (Spring - Summer, 1996), pp. 81-91.
• Donald MacKenzie, "Marx and the Machine," Technology and Culture, Vol. 25, No. 3. (Jul., 1984), pp. 473-502.
• George Saliba lecture: “Arabic Islamic Science and the making of the Renaissance.”
• Lewis Mumford, “Cultural Preparation,” Technics and Civilization, 9-59. 
• Jacques Ellul, The Technological System.

Week 3: Industrialized, Part One (Feb 7th)

Readings for today:

• David E. Nye, "The Factory: From the Pastoral Mill to the Industrial Sublime," in American Technological Sublime (MIT Press: 1996), pp. 109-142.
• Lewis Mumford, "The Monastary and the Clock," in Technics and Civilization (Routledge & Kegan: 1934), pp. 12-18.
• Wolfgang Schivelbusch, "Railroad Space and Railroad Time," in The Railway Journey: The Industrialization and Perception of Time and Space. 

For further reading/research:

• James Carey, "Technology and Ideology: The Case of the Telegraph," in New Media Reader.
• E.P. Thompson, "Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism," Past and Present, No. 38 (Dec., 1967), pp. 56-97. 
• Wolfgang Schivelbusch, "The Space of Glass Architecture," in The Railway Journey: The Industrialization and Perception of Time and Space. 
• Thomas Pynchon, “Is it O.K. to be a Luddite?” New York Times Book Review, October 28, 1984.
• Charlie Chaplin's view of industrialization. 
• Industrialization at its tastiest: the Krispy Kreme Doughnut Machine

Week 4: Industrialized, Part Two (Feb 14th)

Readings for today:

• Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work For Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology From the Open Hearth to the Microwave (1983). Read 'Introduction' and Chapters 3-5.

For further reading & research:

• Dolores Hayden, "Two Utopian Feminists and Their Campaigns for Kitchenless Houses," Signs, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1978), pp. 274-290.
• Kimberley W. Carrell, "The Industrial Revolution Comes to the Home: Kitchen Design Reform and Middle-Class Women," Journal of American Culture, Fall79, Vol. 2 Issue 3 (Fall 1979): 488-499. 
• Ruth Schwartz Cown, "Less Work for Mother?," American Heritage, Vol. 2, no. 3 (1987).

Week 5: Radio (Feb 21st)

Readings for today:

• Susan Douglas, "The Visions and Business Realities of the Inventors, 1899-1905," “Popular Culture and Populist Technology” and “The Titanic Disaster and the First Radio Regulation,” in Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899-1922 (pp. 61-88, 187-239).

For further reading and research:

• Jonathan Sterne, “A Machine to Hear For Them: On the Very Possibility of Sound’s Reproduction,” Cultural Studies, 15, no. 2 (2001): 259-294. 
• Kristen Haring, "The 'Freer Men' of Ham Radio: How a Technical Hobby Provided Social and Spatial Distance," Technology and Culture, Vol. 44 (2003): 734-761. 
• Jody Berland, "Radio Space and Industrial Time: Music Formats, Local Narratives and Technological Mediation," Popular Music, Vol. 9, No. 2, Radio Issue (1990): 179-192. 
• Derek W. Vaillant, "Sounds of Whiteness: Local Radio, Racial Formation, and Public Culture in Chicago, 1921–1935," American Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 1 (March 2002): 25-66. 
• Jonathan Sterne, “The mp3 as Cultural Artifact,” New Media & Society, Vol. 8, no. 5, pp. 825-842.  
• Pacifica Radio Archives  
• Pirate Radio USA trailer  
• Archive.org (audio) 
• A brief synopsis of pirate radio.  
• Micropower radio around the world

Week 6: Television (Feb 28th)

Readings for today:

• Lynn Spigel, "Domestic Ideals and Family Amusements" and “The Home Theater,” in Make Room for TV, pp. 11-35; 99-139.
• Pierre Bourdieu, "Television," European Review, Vol. 9, No. 3 (2001): 245–256.

For further reading/research:

• Sharon Sharp, "Television, Gender and Space: An Overview of Lynn Spigel," Science Fiction Film and Television, Volume 2, Issue 2, Spring 2009, pp. 281-292.
• Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and the Cultural Form (Routledge: 2003). Originally published in 1974.
• Jonathan Sterne, "Television under construction: American television and the problem of distribution, 1926-62," Media, Culture & Society, 1999, 21: 503-530.  
• Max Dawson, "Home Video and the 'TV Problem': Cultural Critics and Technological Change," Technology and Culture, Vol. 48 (2007), pp. 524-549. 
• Lila Abu-Lughod, "Islam and Public Culture: The Politics of Egyptian TV Serials," Middle East Report, No. 180, Power, Mass Media and the Middle East. (Jan-Feb, 1993): 25-30.
• John Fiske, Television Culture (Routledge: 1987), Chapters 1-2. 
• Evan I. Schwartz, "Who Really Invented Television?" Technology Review, September, 2000. 
• UHF, starring Weird Al Yankovic.  
• Museum of Television.

Week 7: The Internet (March 7th)

Readings for today:

• Fred Turner, "Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy: The WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community," Technology and Culture, Vol. 46 (2005): 486-512.
• David J. Gunkel and Ann Hetzel Gunkel, "Terra Nova 2.0—The New World of MMORPGs," Critical Studies in Media Communication, Volume 26, Issue 2 June 2009 , pp. 104-127.

For further reading & research:

• Lance Bennett, "The Internet and Global Activism," in eds. Nick Couldry and James Curran, New Media Power (Rowman and Littlefield: 2003).
• Philip Howard, Lee Rainie and Steve Jones, "The Place of the Internet in Everyday Life." (excerpt)
• Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner, "Internet Subcultures and Oppositional Politics."
• National Science Foundation, "The Internet: Changing the Way We Live." (aside from the technologically deterministic title, it's a nice overview of some key events and 'players' in the development of the internet). 
• Maria Bakardjieva, "Virtual togetherness: An Everyday-life Perspective," Media, Culture & Society, Vol. 25 (2003): 291–313. 
• Critical Art Ensemble, Electronic Civil Disobedience (Autonomedia: 1996). 
• Critical Art Ensemble, Digital Resistance (Autonomedia: 2001). 
• Global internet statistics. 
• Internet pornography statistics.  
• Online dating and avatars.

Week 8: Transportation (March 14th)

Readings for today:

• Wolfgang Schivelbusch, "The American Railroad," in The Railway Journey: The Industrialization and Perception of Time and Space. 
• Gary Allan Tobin, “The Bicycle Boom of the 1890’s: The Development of Private Transportation and the Birth of the Modern Tourist,” Popular Culture, 7, 1974.
• André Gorz, “The Social Ideology of the Motorcar.” Le Sauvage, September-October 1973.
• Paul Gilroy, “Driving While Black.” In Car Cultures, ed. Daniel Miller. Berg, 2001, pp. 81-104.

For further reading/research:

• Zack Furness, Introduction, One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility, Temple University Press (2010).
• Mimi Sheller and John Urry, "The City and the Car," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 24, No. 4 (2000): 737-757.
• Jason Henderson, "Secessionist Automobility: Racism, Anti-Urbanism, and the Politics of Automobility in Atlanta, Georgia," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 30, No. 2 (June 2006): 293–307.
• Paul Rosen, "The Social Construction of Mountain Bikes: Technology and Postmodernity in the Cycle Industry," Social Studies of Science, Vol. 23, No. 3. (August, 1993), pp. 479-513.
• Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity.
• Steffen Bohm (ed), Against Automobility (a great collection of essays)
• Mimi Sheller, "Automotive Emotions: Feeling the Car." Lancaster University, 2003.
• Zack Furness, "Critical Mass, Urban Space, and Vélomobility," Mobilities, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2007): 299-319.
• NOW on PBS: Driven to Despair (video).
• National Public Radio: Trains see record ridership (audio).
• Tokyo's automatic bicycle garage.
• The dumbest transportation technology ever invented.
• The best transportation technology ever invented.
  

Week 9: Food Tech (March 28th)

Readings for today:

• Carolyn de la Peña, "Artificial Sweetener as a Historical Window to Culturally Situated Health," Annuls of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 1190 (2010): 159–165. 
• Paul Josephson, "The Ocean’s Hot Dog: The Development of the Fish Stick," Technology and Culture, Volume 49, Number 1 (January 2008): 41-61. 
• Jodan Kleiman, "Local Food and the Problem of Public Authority," Technology and Culture, Volume 50, Number 2, April 2009, pp. 399-417.

For further reading/research:

• William Boyd, "Making Meat: Science, Technology, and American Poultry Production," Technology and Culture, Volume 42, Number 4 (October 2001): 631-664.
• Jim Mason and Mary Finelli, "Brave New Farm," in Ed. Peter Singer, In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave (Blackwell: 2006), pp. 104-122.
• Carolyn de la Peña, "False Scarlet: Healthful Sugar vs. Adulterous Saccharin in the Early Twentieth Century," in Empty Pleasures: The Story of Artificial Sweeteners from Saccharin to Splenda (North Carolina Press: 2010).
• Massimo Mazzotti, "Enlightened Mills: Mechanizing Olive Oil Production in Mediterranean Europe," Technology and Culture, Vol. 45, April 2004, pp. 277-304.
• Harriet Friedmann, "The Political Economy of Food: A Global Crisis," The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 88, Supplement: Marxist Inquiries: Studies of Labor, Class, and States. (1982), pp. S248-S286.
• Theodor C. Bestor, "How Sushi Went Global," Foreign Policy, Nov/Dec 2000, pp. 54-63.
• Steve Ettlinger, author of Twinkie, Deconstructed, giving a presentation at the Google Headquarters.
• Shelly Nickles, "Preserving Women: Refrigerator Design as Social Process in the 1930s," Technology and Culture, Volume 43, Number 4, October 2002, pp. 693-727.

Week 10: Nuclear (April 4th)

Readings for today:

• Ferenc M. Szasz and Issei Takechi, "Atomic Heroes and Atomic Monsters: American and Japanese Cartoonists Confront the Onset of the Nuclear Age, 1945–80," The Historian, Volume 69, Issue 4 (2007): 728–752.
• Abby J. Kinchy, "African Americans in the Atomic Age: Postwar Perspectives on Race and the Bomb, 1945–1967," Technology and Culture, Volume 50, Number 2, April 2009, pp. 291-315. 
• Nuke Pop 
• In-class screening: Atomic Cafe

For further reading/research on nukes & weapons:

• Raymond Williams, "The Politics of Nuclear Disarmament." 
• Harvey Wasserman interviewed on Democracy Now!, February 18, 2010. 
• Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation (1982).
• Nick Turse, "6 Terrifying New Weapons Being Created by the Pentagon," Tomdispatch.com, January 31, 2011. 
• Robotic surveillance 'bats' developed with U.S. Army funding.
• William K. Storey, "Guns, Race, and Skill in Nineteenth-Century Southern Africa," Technology and Culture, Vol. 45, October 2004, pp. 687-711.
• Johan Höglund, "Electronic Empire: Orientalism Revisited in the Military Shooter," Game Studies, Volume 8, Issue 1, September 2008. 
• AK-47 documentary (from Al-Jazeera)
• The Bomb Project.

Week 11: Techno/bodies (April 11th)

Readings for today:

• Carol Stabile, "Shooting the Mother: Fetal Photography and the Politics of Disappearance," Camera Obscura, 28 (January 1992): 180-206.
• "You Are a Cyborg." An interview with Donna Haraway from Wired. 
• "Morhping the Human Body," ESPN.com

For further reading and research:

• Anne Balsamo, "On the Cutting Edge: Cosmetic Surgery and the Technological Production of the Gendered Body," Camera Obscura, 28, January 1992, pp. 207-238.
• D. Marie Ralstin Lewis, "The Continuing Struggle against Genocide: Indigenous Women’s Reproductive Rights," Wacazo Sa Review, Spring 2005, pp. 71-95. 
• A Thin Blue Line: The History of the Pregnancy Test Kit 
• The Critical Art Ensemble’s Bio Tech Projects: Flesh Machine; Society for Reproductive Anachronisms; Cult of the New Eve. 
• David Gunkel, "We Are Borg: Cyborgs and the Subject of Communication," Communication Theory, Vol. 10, Issue 3, p 332-357.
• Ted Butryn and Matthew Masucci, “It’s Not About The Book: A Cyborg Counternarrative of Lance Armstrong,” Journal of Sport and Social Issues, Volume 27, No. 2, May 2003, pp. 124-144.
• Prosthetics barred at the Olympics? ‘Blade Runner’ Loses Beijing Hopes 
• Wired Magazine’s ‘Top 10 New Organisms of 2007’  
• "Weaponizing the Pentagon's Cyborg Insects." 
• Terminator vs. Robocop

Week 12: Technoskepticism (April 18th)

Readings for today:

• Lewis Mumford, "Authoritarian and Democratic Technics." 
• Carroll Pursell, "The Rise and Fall of the Appropriate Technology Movement in the United States, 1965-1985," Technology and Culture, Vol. 34, No. 3. (Jul., 1993), pp. 629-637.
• Jameson Wemore, "Amish Technology," in Technology and Society (MIT: 2009), pp. 297-318.
• Derrick Jensen, "Premises," in Endgame, Vol. II: Resistance (Seven Stories Press: 2006), pp. xi-xi.

For further reading and research:

• Langdon Winner, "Building the Better Mousetrap," in The Whale and the Reactor (University of Chicago Press: 1988), pp. 61-84.
• Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity 
• Andrew Ross, "Hacking Away at the Counterculture," Postmodern Culture, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1990.
• Carol Stabile, "'A Garden Inclosed is My Sister': Ecofeminism and Eco-Valences," Cultural Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1994): 56-73.
• Ron Eglash’s, "Introduction," Appropriating Technology.
• Lila Abu-Lughod, “Bedouins, Cassettes and Technologies of Public Culture,” Middle East Report, No. 159, (Jul-Aug, 1989), pp. 7-11 & 47.  
• Steve Waksman, "California Noise: Tinkering with Hardcore and Heavy Metal in Southern California," Social Studies of Science, Vol. 34, No. 5 (October 2004): 675–702.
• Appropriating technology links (courtesy of Ron Eglash)
• Books by the Critical Art Ensemble (in their entirety....for free) 
• Tactical Media resources via New York University 
• Hactivist 
• The History of Hacking (Infographic) 
• Parasitic Media (by Nathan, on behalf of the Carbon Defense League)

Week 13: iWorld (April 25th)

Readings for today:

• Michael Bull, "No Dead Air! The iPod and the Culture of Mobile Listening," Leisure Studies, Vol. 24, No. 4, 343–355, October 2005.
• Trebor Scholz and Paul Hartzog, "Toward a Critique of the Social Web," Re-public.
• Ethan Zuckerman, "Mobile Phones and Social Activism," Techsoup, June 20, 2007.
• Giles Slade, "iWaste," Mother Jones, March/April 2007.

For further reading and research:

• Andrew Ross, a talk (Part One) and (Part Two) on digital labor given at the "Internet as Playground and Factory" conference. 
• "Digital Darkness: U.S., U.K. Companies Help Egyptian Regime Shut Down Telecommunications and Identify Dissident Voices," Democracy Now!, February 1, 2011.
  

Week 14: Final Paper Workshop (May 2nd)

For today:

• Technology of the Word! Bring a draft of your paper to work on during today's class. Your draft should include: 1) A clear thesis/argument, 2) A plan for your paper, 3) A working bibliography with brief annotations (i.e. notes about your sources).
  

Week 15: Last Day of Class

For today:

• FINAL PAPERS ARE DUE TODAY!
• In-class presentations & discussion!