Over the course of four two-hour sessions we will seek to place thinking about the future of technology into context by drawing upon fictional and non-fictional works that bear upon the internet, its culture and technology. These are the readings which rarely if ever fit into a law and technology syllabus, but which might inspire us to think about the big picture before immersing in the doctrine.
Here are the readings being discussed this semester:
Thursday, September 15th, 2011
Day One: The Past – how did we end up here? (31 pages, plus maps)
- Jonathan Zittrain. The Future of the Internet (And How to Stop It). (New Haven: Yale UP, 2008), 7-35.
- John Battelle. “The Future of the Internet (And How to Stop It) A Dialog with Jonathan Zittrain Updating his 2008 Book.” John Battelle’s Searchblog.
- Randall Munroe. XKCD’s Maps of the Internet.
- “Map of the Internet: The IPv4 Space, 2006.”
- “Map of Online Communities: Spring 2007.”
- “Updated Map of Online Communities: Spring and Summer of 2010.”
- Bonus points – update the map from the spring and summer of 2010. What has changed? What does it look like now?
Wednesday, September 28th, 2011
Ourselves, Online (79 pages)
- Neal Stephenson. Snow Crash, (New York: Bantam Books, 1992), 35-44.
- Edward Castronova. “Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier” CESifo Working Paper Series No. 618. (2001). (39 pages)
- Nicolas Ducheneaut, Ming-Hui “Don” Wen, Nicholas Yee, Greg Wadley. “Body and Mind: A Study of Avatar Personalization in Three Virtual Worlds.” CHI 2009. (10 pages)
- Kee Hinkley. “On Pseudonymity, Privacy and Responsibility on Google+.” TechnoSocial. Published July 27th, 2011. (21 pages)
Monday, October 17th, 2011
Are Games the Future? (And will we even notice a change?) (21 pages + 30 minute talk)
- Charles Stross. Halting State. (New York: Ace Books, 2007). 14-18 (online robbery)
- Choe Sang-Hun. “Seoul Warns of Latest North Korean Threat: An Army of Online Gaming Hackers.” The New York Times. Published August 4th, 2011.
- Thomas Lowenthal. “Bitcoin: inside the encrypted, peer-to-peer digital currency.” Ars Technica. Published June 8th, 2011.
- Timothy B. Lee. “Bitcoin prices plummet on hacked exchange.” Ars Technica. Published June 19th, 2011.
- Charles Stross. Halting State. (New York: Ace Books, 2007), 158-162.
- Ben Kuchera. “Leaks, riots and monocles: how a $60 in-game item almost destroyed EVE Online.” Ars Technica Published July 11th, 2011.
- Julian Dibbell. “The Life of a Chinese Gold Farmer.” The New York Times. Published June 17th, 2007.
- Jesse Schell. “Design Outside the Box” DICE 2010. (Video Presentation) G4 TV.
Monday, November 28th, 2011
The Future and the Crowd: (76 pages)
- Ernest Cline. Ready Player One. (New York: Crown, 2011), 1-36.
- John C. Tang, Manuel Cebrian, Nicklaus A. Giacobe, Hyun-Woo Kim, Taemie Kim, and Douglas “Beaker” Wickert. “Reflecting on the DARPA Red Balloon Challenge”, Communications of the ACM 54 (4). (2011).
- Jonathan Zittrain. COG. Publication forthcoming. 1-5.
- Charles Stross. Rule 34 (New York: Ace, 2011), 153-157.
- Charles Stross. “USENIX 2011 Keynote: Network Security in the Medium Term, 2061 – 2561 AD.” Charlie’s Diary.