This course presents a view from the future when we will recognize that the true cultural innovators at the turn of the 21st century were those who engaged directly with the technologies that have come to define our age, rather than those whose fields remained relatively stable during this historical period. The course will investigate the ideas that have shaped contemporary technologies (computers, networks, algorithms, etc.) and consequently how those ideas affect society in the way that technology work as environments.
The themes will be explored from historical, theoretical (through research and discussions) and technical (through new media workshops) perspectives. Topics surveyed include networks, the web, social media, participatory cultures, online communities, memes, sharing, open source, remix, originality, versioning, algorithms, automation, artificial intelligence, code, programming, data mining, hacking, privacy and digital rights.
