The emergence of digital technologies and global communication networks has had a tremendous impact on society. We have access to and are bombarded by vast quantities of data and sometimes information. Our digital toolkit allows us to access, store, manipulate, and transmit vast amounts of information. These changes have created concommitant social issues: Who has access to what information?
What is Privacy? How does copyright law function in cyberspace? Are there new forms of intellectual property law that work better in a networked world? Are distribution channels content blind(are all bits created equal?)? Gatekeepers, Custodians, and Watchdogs: Who is minding the bits? Who is counting the bucks? Does our imagery of a wired/wireless world create, generate, or limit future innovations or policy options?
The course will explore specific issues in information policy that impact social organization such as intellectual property, privacy, division of bandwidth, and the bounds of jurisdiction.
The class explores current events and links them to theoretical perspectives from a number of different disciplines: Public Policy, Information Studies,Computer Science, Creative Arts, Political Science, Education, etc.
Each week we explore information issues that have made the news that week (from announcements of new products, to court cases, to take-overs and mergers, to public policy debates such as those around intellectual property and privacy). Students learn about the latest topics and trends, deconstruct marketing and political rhetoric from the core technologies, and develop the skills to improve access to communities served by Information Studies Professionals by increased understanding of technology delivery systems and their milieu.
Each student participates in a focus group representing a particular discipline/perspective, and that focus group is responsible for summarizing background readings from that perspective for the rest of the class.
Students are assumed to have attended Multimedia & Information Technology Lab bootcamp or equivalent. You should have already been introduced to basic image processing.
| READING: | assigned reading must be completed before class |
| GRADING: | Grades for the course will be based on a class and focus group particpation (45%), midterm project "report"(10%) and a project/paper final(45%). |
| September 29th | Orientation Greek Theater World Music Concert |
| September 30 | Background, History, Review of Terminology |
| October 7th | The structure of information. Multidimensional representation of information. The Illumination of Social Structures. Deconstruction of Social Phenomena. |
| October 14 | Reality, Discovery and Mythmaking: cultural decision making processes. |
| October 21 | Copyright, Cyberlaw |
| October 28 | Artist’s Rights and The Open Code |
| October 28 | IMSC LAB Performance acquisition, rendering in the 21st Century |
| November 4 | Information Commons |
| November 11 | Veteran’s Day |
| November 18 | Information Privacy I |
| November 20 | Information Privacy II |
| November 25 | Social Impact of Database Law: Europe and the US |
| December 2 | TBA Focus Group Meetings NO CLASS |
| December 9 | Final Projects/Papers due. |