The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed by Racter

“ Preface.” A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Provisional Course Schedule Week 1: Plain text

Please email me if you cannot access any of these sites and documents. All readings will be linked from the syllabus directly.Requirements and GradingĢ0% Online Participation (weekly forum posts) The course will connect core concepts in computer science to long-standing problems posed by philosophy, literary theory, and social thought. Second, we will build on these theoretical foundations to gain a measure of computational proficiency, learning about the basics of algorithmic thinking, computer architecture, internet infrastructure, file and operating systems, internet infrastructure, communication protocols, web standards, and cryptography.įinally, we will contextualize our practice historically. We will do this first by exploring the foundational concepts invoked in the discussion about new media: noise and information, data and metadata, artificial and natural languages, digital and analog media. The goal of this class is to bring our everyday encounter with technology into the light, to peel back the lid, and to take control. These agents, located at the core of human-computer interaction, shape our understanding of the each other and of the world in significant ways, and yet they remain opaque, obscured within the black boxes of restricted access and proprietary software.

Machines do things for us: they “process” words, “manage” content, and “serve” web pages. For many, even for those with a technical education, computing remains an unreflective activity.

The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed by Racter