GS197 Freshman Seminar: 9th Week

(http://faculty.washington.edu/krumme/GS197/week9.html)

Class Page: http://faculty.washington.edu/krumme/projects/GS197.html

Today's Activities:

• Inserting Hyperlinks into your Web Pages! (under construction!)
• Discussion of Student Pages and Mini Research
• Societal Repercussions of Internet (Selected Topics)
  • Principles of Technorealism [Handout, Week#8]

    Technorealism demands that we think critically about the role that tools and interfaces play in human evolution and everyday life... As technorealists, we seek to expand the fertile middle ground between techno-utopianism and neo-Luddism... We can be passionately optimistic about some technologies, skeptical and disdainful of others. Still, our goal is neither to champion nor dismiss technology, but rather to understand it and apply it in a manner more consistent with basic human values. Below are some evolving basic principles that help explain technorealism.

    PRINCIPLES OF TECHNOREALISM

    1. Technologies are not neutral.
    2. The Internet is revolutionary, but not Utopian.
    3. Government has an important role to play on the electronic frontier.
    4. Information is not knowledge.
    5. Wiring the schools will not save them.
    6. Information wants to be protected.
    7. The public owns the airwaves; the public should benefit from their use.
    8. Understanding technology should be an essential component of global citizenship.

    Technorealism Resources:

    • Technorealism Panel1 (Discussion) (1998)
    • Technorealism Panel2 (Discussion) (1998)
    • Andrew Shapiro Director, Aspen Institute Internet Policy Project First Amendment Fellow, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society (Harvard) Andrew L. Shapiro is a writer, lawyer, and policy analyst with a particular interest in the impact of new technologies such as the Internet. He has also been a fellow at The Twentieth Century Fund, a New York City think tank for which he is writing a book on the politics of new media. He is a cofounder of the Technorealism project, a new attempt to raise public awareness about the impact of technology.
    • "The Control Revolution: How the Internet Is Putting Individuals in Charge and Changing the World We Know," by Andrew L. Shapiro (Public Affairs, Perseus Books, 1999). Shapiro along with fellow author and writer David Shenk, coined the term "techno-realism" last year and helped launch that idea as middle ground between the extremes of techno-hype and techno-pessimism. His new book is a lengthy expression of techno-realist principles, celebrating both the liberating and democratic features of the Internet and raising flags about ominous efforts to limit and shape individual autonomy in cyberspace. He attempts to offer a middle ground between these two poles with a detailed set of recommendations for the future. (Gary Chapman, Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1999)

    
    

  • Web designers find comfort in more casual settings [MecuryCenter, May 11, 1999, BY DAVID BORAKS]

    These companies, along with start-up software developers and New Media publishers, are helping forge a new way of thinking about work: both the physical, such as office layouts, and the intangible, such as teamwork and collaboration.... Worldwide sales of just one piece of this business -- Internet development services -- were an estimated $7 billion in 1998 and are projected to reach $44 billion by 2002, according to research firm International Data Corp.... At these firms, the pace of work is often fast, with constant deadlines, making it all the more important that employees have a way to release tension and have fun, too.

  • The rewards of 'jumping' the technology gap Copyright © 1999 Nando Media/Christian Science Monitor Service By JAMES L. TYSON

    (May 10, 1999 http://www.nandotimes.com) - They are performing spectacular leaps across the "technology gap" - city homeless who boast an e-mail address; a minimum-wage earner who, after learning computer software in a matter of months, brings home $30 an hour as a software trainer. Though the gulf in opportunity between computer haves and have-nots is wide, the sheer demand for information technology has narrowed the inequality in skills and wages, experts say.

  • "Wake up and smell the coffers: Internet taxation is the wave of the future" [FROM THE ETHER, Bob Metcalfe, InfoWorld OnLine April 19, 1999]

    Face it, the Internet won't be some alternative tax-free utopia. Commerce on the Internet is already in the tens of billions and booming. Internet commerce will be taxed. Has to be. Get over it.

  • Humphries, Courtney, "Seattle's GigaPop Brings the Next Generation of the Internet to the Northwest," Northwest Science and Technologies Vol.1 No.1, Spring 1999, pp.18-20.

    "The speed limit has been lifted on the Information Superhighway, and the UW is one of the first institutions to join the fast lane" ... "Because the GigaPop is a common place where a number of networks attach, any computer that is attached to the UW's GigaPop will have access to all of these networks." GigaPop (Giga for gigabit -- 1,000 megabits -- per second, and Pop for "point of presence")

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• Slowly but surely we are running out of time .... Today's activities do not quite amount to a formal judging of our Web pages.... yet, BUT we will be working on our pages today towards your "Web Certification". At the end of the quarter, certificates will be awarded in three classes:
  1. Professional (Extraordinary Merit)
  2. Hyper-Expert (Excellent Results)
  3. Cyber-Space Cadet (Remarkable Effort)
  
  Criteria will include: [Mini-Research Guidelines]
  1. Quality of Mini-Research Content (Content not to exceed a total of 600 words)
  2. Hypertextual Design and Organization of Pages (see guidelines)
  3. Absence of grammatical and spelling errors, quality of writing
  4. Quality of four or five resources used.
  5. Appearance of pages.
  Judges:
  All of us. Your votes count half, mine the other half.

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If you have not done so yet, be sure to:

1. catch up with weeks 2-8 as needed.
2. include your new or changed "special topic" in the "introduction" on your Web site or send it to krumme@u for the membership list.
3. start a new page/file for your "special topic". From now on, you may want to find at least one reference every week and add at least two sentences to an evolving brief "mini-research" write-up on your special topic every week. (The end product should be 300-600 words of concise, well organized [on at least two hypertextually linked pages] and thoroughly proofread and edited writing)
4. Discussions of Members' pages and mini research projects start on Wed of the 9th week