Unit One, Predraft One (P1.1)
Write one paragraph in which you describe an image. The image is Robert Frank’s “New York City,” available for viewing in the Materials section of this website. A picture is worth well over a thousand words, and you will undoubtedly be able to describe in your short paragraph only certain aspects of the photograph. Though you cannot be comprehensive, do try to be accurate. The primary goal of this assignment is for you to practice close reading of an image, focusing on the evidence that you provide in anticipation of a claim you will support.
Near the end of your descriptive paragraph, draw some conclusion about the photograph that your description supports. Your conclusion should be provocative, surprising, strange, or otherwise interesting. In short, it should be something worth mentioning. Your brief paragraph will not be able adequately to support your conclusion, but should provide some evidence in favor of it. This is the secondary goal of this predraft assignment: to move toward an original, motivated thesis supported by your evidence.
Please e-mail to me your paragraph by Saturday, September 10, at noon. Include your paragraph not as an attachment but in-line, as part of the e-mail text. In the subject line, include the designation “P1.1.” Also include your name in the subject line. (I know that your name is already associated with the e-mail, but for reasons of bookkeeping, it helps me to have it appear in the subject line, too.)
Finally, please include in the same e-mail (but separately) a brief introduction. Where are you from? What are you studying at MIT? What prompted you to take this class? What do you hope to gain from this class? Comments always welcome.
Unit One, Predraft Two (P1.2)
Finish reading the three chapters of William Mitchell’s book, The Reconfigured Eye, as well as Lev Manovich’s short essay, “The Paradoxes of Digital Photography.” In a few sentences, answer the following questions.
These two authors disagree. What is the primary point of contention between them?
Which of the two do you agree with and why?
By focusing on the debate between these two theorists of digital imaging, you will deepen your own understanding of the issues in this debate, and be better prepared to develop a motivated, complex, and well-supported thesis in your own essay.
Please bring a hardcopy of your few sentences to class on Thursday. Be prepared to articulate further your claims.
Unit One Essay Assignment (E1)
Please read this whole assignment carefully.
Write an essay, about three to five pages long, comparing two specific images. One image is the photograph by Robert Frank, “New York City.” The other image is “The Forest (Klaus)” by Inez van Lamsweerde, available on the course website under Materials.
The nature of the comparison is up to you, and the strength of your essay will likely rest on whether you find an interesting claim to make about the juxtaposition of these two images. Whatever you choose to say, you should support your contentions with close examination of the images themselves, offering concise, descriptive language to capture the relevant aspects of the images. You may assume that your reader has seen the two images under discussion, but that she does not have them available while reading your essay.
While the Frank image is a straight photograph, the Lamsweerde image has been altered using a computer. In particular, Lamsweerde has replaced the subject's mouth and hands with those of a woman. You are not required to make use of this fact in your discussion of the images, but you are invited to do so, and you may also find it helpful to keep in mind the texts on digital imaging by Manovich and Mitchell that were discussed in class. This essay does not call for any additional research, but asks you to do original thinking in your writing. As part of this thinking, you may refer in your essay to the supporting materials that accompany the images on the web pages under Materials. (Please include bibliographic information properly formatted for any sources you do choose to use.)
It is not enough just to describe the images, nor just to detail their similarities and differences. The central claim of your essay must discover something about the conjunction of these two images that matters, something about these two images that is so interesting (to you and your reader) that it needs to be pursued in an essay. Again, finding such a worthy thesis is the most difficult aspect of essay writing, and deserves your own most critical attention.
Writing Process: One valuable strategy for writing — both in this assignment and in writing generally — is to begin your thoughts (not necessarily your essay) with your own “gut” reaction. How do these images make you feel? Is there something intriguing or disturbing or exciting about them? Try to figure out why or how the images have this effect on you. Be as specific as possible. Allow yourself to explore your feelings and the images in great detail, but remember to edit your writing so that each sentence advances your discussion and relates to your thesis. Similarly, hotspots in either image or both might provoke the most interesting responses from you; find some hotspots and write down your subsequent thoughts as part of your writing process.
Writing Skills: As this is the first essay assignment in 21W.784, it places some demands on you as a writer, demands that may feel unfamiliar. You probably already have some idea how to read a text, but this assignment asks you to read images. You probably have done some interpretive work in previous assignments, but this assignments demands from you a close reading. You may have supported a thesis in an essay before, but this assignment asks you to make sure that your thesis is both motivated and original. And you are expected to come up with a motivated, original thesis having to do with not just one but two images (a comparative thesis) that do not obviously speak to each other. All of these aspects of the assignment are challenging and possibly unfamiliar, and you should reflect as you work on what parts of this essay you find most difficult to write and what in the assignment presents the greatest challenge.
As with other essays in this class, this assignment will be submitted for commentary, then revised and resubmitted. Do not regard the initial submission as preliminary. Other than the fact that this first draft will undergo a revision, there is nothing about it that should be draft-like. That is, both draft and revision should be completely edited for spelling, grammar, punctuation, flow, clarity, concision, citations, etc.
Along with your draft and your revision, please append a page with one or two paragraphs of self-critique, where you discuss what you think are the problems with your essay. What parts of your essay are unclear? What parts are boring? What parts are not sufficiently motivated? What should you have discussed that got left out? You may also comment on aspects of your essay that you are particularly pleased with or proud of. This sort of self-critique is an extremely valuable skill in essay writing, and it is well worth practicing whenever possible.
The draft of this essay is due in my office or in the inbox on my door (14N-316) at noon on Saturday, September 17. The revision will be due in class on Tuesday, September 27. For both draft and revision, please send me a copy of your essay by e-mail as an attachment, on the due date. Late draft submissions may receive no commentary, and late submitters may be ineligible for a conference. Late revisions may be penalized.
For the details of formatting and typography, please refer to the syllabus for this course (available on this website).
Unit Two, Predraft One (P2.1)
After reading the packet of journalistic material on Internet ethics—posted under Materials on the course website—choose one of the various ethical issues (cases) raised in these articles. With this issue in mind, write one or two paragraphs, including both of these things:
(1) A description of your case, in concise, vivid, and provocative detail. This description should inform your reader about the specifics of the case you will study, citing one or more examples of the ethical dilemma at the heart of your case. It should be dramatic enough to entertain your reader, while piquing her interest, making her want to know more.
(2) A discussion of how this is a problem of ethics. Your description of the case should highlight the way in which this issue poses an ethical dilemma. Why is this an ethical problem (as opposed to, say, merely a practical problem)? What are the ethical principles involved in deciding how to deal with this case? What other aspects of our lives are related to this same ethical issue?
At this point in the essay writing process, you are not expected to enter into the debate about your case, only to frame its terms. You might imagine that you are a judge, introducing a case to a jury who is about to hear arguments on either side. Your job is to present to the jury the most salient details of the case, and to show them why this case deserves their attention, why it is important and why it is complicated.
As you have only two paragraphs in which to accomplish this difficult task, you must choose your words carefully. You will not have space to include every last detail, nor will you be able to provide much historical background or other contextualizing information. You can assume that your audience is already familiar with the phenomenon of the Internet and with the general field of ethical dilemmas there. That is, you don’t have to explain, for example, what spam is, but you should make clear just how important it is by citing a telling statistic or a particularly dramatic event having to do with spam. While this assignment asks you to write (one or) two paragraphs, I do not imagine that they will break down into one paragraph of description and one about ethics. The description should be framed and motivated by the ethical discussion, while the discussion of ethics should be explained and filled out by the description of the case.
Please e-mail to me your two paragraphs (inline, not as an attachment, and including the usual stuff in the subject line of the e-mail) by class on Thursday, September 29. Also bring a hardcopy of your paragraphs to class that day.
Unit Two Predraft Two (P2.2)
This time, the predraft assignment calls for three paragraphs.
Write one paragraph in which you explain how the ethical issue surrounding your chosen case arises in the context of the Internet. What is it about the Internet that adds fuel to this problem of ethics? Does the electronic context make a real difference, or is this just an old problem of ethics now realized in a new location? Is there something about the technology itself that intensifies certain problems of ethics?
Write another paragraph in which you express (and defend) your own feelings about this case. Is one side of the debate simply correct? Is it too complicated to decide (and if so, why)? Is there a solution that is being generally overlooked or dismissed?
Finally, write one further paragraph in which you articulate what you take to be the strongest counterargument to your position: Which argument opposing your own is the most difficult for your position to defend against, and why?
Please e-mail to me, not as an attachment but in-line, your three paragraphs by 2pm on Wednesday, October 5.
Unit Two Essay Assignment (E2)
Write an essay, about four to six pages long, using a case study to address the question of the relationship between ethics and the Internet.
Studying the cases available on the course website, choose an issue of ethics relevant to the Internet (file sharing, privacy, spam, etc.) Your essay should use this case to offer insight into the relationship between ethics and the Internet: What is the role of the Internet in shaping this case, and how does the Internet affect ethical concerns broadly speaking? As such, your job is not to resolve the debate about your case study nor to pick a side; rather, you are expected to comment on whether and how the Internet imposes unique circumstances on the question of ethics. How does this ethical issue arise in the context of electronic communication? What traditional ethical questions bear on this issue? Do we need to understand ethics differently in the context of the Internet?
Challenges: As in Unit One, this essay poses a challenge in that you must negotiate an awkward tension between the particular and the general: On the one hand, your essay will analyze a particular case of ethics, drawing on specific real-world examples; on the other hand, your conclusions should address broader questions of ethics and the Internet, using your chosen case as an example from which to generalize. In Unit One, this particular/general problem showed up as a problem of motive: how to justify the analysis of those two specific images. In Unit Two, motive is sort of built in to the assignment, since you are writing about the inherently important issue of ethics. The challenge this time is likely a matter of thesis: what claim can you make that is broadly related to ethics and the Internet while still being analyzable in terms of a specific case? Also, in Unit One, the evidence you could draw upon was fairly limited to the images under analysis. In Unit Two, the evidence is far more disparate in scope and in type, and choosing just what evidence to cite will be an additional challenge.
This essay is asking you to consider the nature of ethics. Ethics is not just a matter of your intuition about right and wrong, but involves systematic thinking about the basis for making judgments of value. As such, you should support your ethical discussion with some attention to the assumptions that you are making about what constitutes ethical conduct. What sort of overarching ethical framework are you employing, and why should your reader sympathize with this framework for ethics? It is more important to consider all reasonable perspectives than it is to “prove” your central claim. The strength of your essay lies in the thoughtfulness and interest of the analysis that you offer, not in the force with which you defend your thesis. Therefore, include an analysis of legitimate perspectives even if they do not support the conclusion you wish to draw.
Audience: Assume that your reader is a generally educated and thoughtful person, who is broadly familiar with the Internet and the associated issues, though probably not familiar with the particular case you use to frame your essay. Offer the salient details of the case, but make sure that your language is as concise as possible, including only those details necessary to make yourself understood and to make your point forcefully. Your job is not primarily to explain current events or recount the details of a case, but to offer critical analysis of that case in order to reveal its far-reaching implications.
Process: It will likely be helpful for you to begin by investigating your own intuition about the ethics of the case you choose to study, but you cannot stop with this intuition. Instead, you must use this intuition as an opportunity to explore the broader question of how the Internet has affected questions of ethics. Again, the primary challenge of this essay is to negotiate the perplexing demand that you use the concrete case study as a launching pad to move toward broader conclusions. It is not enough—and possibly not even relevant—to take a side in the debate, even if you defend your opinions with persuasive reasoning.
Research: This essay does not call for significant additional research, but does invite you to make use of a variety of sources, including both scholarly and journalistic ones. As with every essay you submit at MIT, please include bibliographic information for any sources you use, and please include this information in a proper format. See Writing with Sources for formatting information.
Along with both draft and revision, please append a page with one or two paragraphs of self-critique, where you discuss what you think are the problems with your essay. What parts of your essay are unclear? What parts are boring? What parts are not sufficiently motivated? What should you have discussed that got left out? You may also comment on aspects of your essay that you are particularly pleased with or proud of. This sort of self-critique is an extremely valuable skill in essay writing, and it is well worth practicing whenever possible.
The draft of this essay is due by email at noon on Wednesday, October 12. In addition to sending me a copy, you will send a copy of your draft to two of your peers, for peer editing on Thursday, October 13 in class. (Further instructions to follow.) The revision is due in class on Thursday, October 20. As part of your responsibility in this assignment is peer editing, late draft submissions will count as absences from class. Late revisions may be penalized.
For the details of formatting and typography, please refer to the syllabus for this course.
Unit Two Speech (S1)
Prepare and deliver a speech, no more than five minutes long, presenting some aspect(s) of your Unit Two essay.
As the essay itself is probably too long to present or even adequately summarize in a five-minute speech, you should refine and focus your speech by choosing only certain parts of your essay to emphasize in the speech. There are a number of ways to do this, and you should choose the way that makes your speech most compelling, highlighting the most interesting aspects of your essay. Perhaps the specific case is the most fascinating part of your essay, so that the best speech will present this case with lots of detail. Perhaps the underlying ethical dilemma is the hardest-hitting dimension of your essay, in which case you would focus on laying out this dilemma in your speech and showing how intractable or complex it is. Perhaps the greatest fascination of your essay lies in the way in which it links ethics to the context of the Internet, in which case this link would be the best focus for your speech. Note that even though you will focus more narrowly in your speech, you need not ignore completely the other parts of your essay, which might be mentioned in passing.
Objectives: The aim of your speech is to intrigue your audience, convincing them that your subject matter deserves attention and further thought. As with a good essay, your speech needn’t demonstrate that you have the answers to the questions you raise, but it should show that these questions are not easily answered, that there is a difficulty and challenge in your topic. Successful speeches will be delivered smoothly and confidently, with clear and articulate elocution and a command over the audience.
Research: Presumably, all necessary research will have already been done as part of the essay-writing process. Bear in mind that persuasive speaking often means demonstrating an expertise, and while the presentation of statistics and other facts risks overwhelming your audience, it can also go a long way toward convincing your audience that you have thoroughly researched and understood your topic. Further, it is often persuasive to give concrete examples both to evince your claims and to augment the impact of your words with vivid stories or heart-rending anecdotes. Assume you are speaking to an audience of intelligent skeptics, who will not choose to agree unless you give them compelling reasons. At the same time, be careful to help your audience to see the big picture, rather than getting lost in lots of interesting but “small” details.
Criteria: You will be judged on both the form and content of your speech. Formal elements include your pace, tone of voice, gestures, eye contact, stance, fluidity, and your general charisma or bearing. Your speech should be dynamic and spirited, with a sense of conviction, expertise, and affability. (You will not be judged on the quality of your attire, so feel free to wear what you would wear to class any other day. On the other hand, the t-shirt with mold growing under the armpits can’t help but give a certain impression.) Elements of content include the quality and originality of your ideas, the structure of your speech, your sensitivity to your audience, your choice of words and sentence structures, your use of compelling imagery, examples, and rhetorical tropes, and the cumulative force of your argument. Bear in mind that while images, analogies, anaphora, litotes, alliteration, and other rhetorical techniques can greatly enhance the power of a speech, these techniques must be appropriate to the context rather than contrived. You are often better off saying something in the most straightforward way possible, rather than risking the confusion of a metaphor that doesn’t quite work.
Format: Speeches will be spread out over two days of class, Thursday, October 20, and Tuesday, October 25. (We may have to take more time, depending on how quickly the speeches go.) All speeches should be prepared for the first day, as speakers will be chosen at random on that day. We have lots of speeches to get through, so please be ready when your name is called. After your five-minute presentation, there will be some time for brief questions from the audience to which you are expected to respond intelligently and compellingly. Following the question-and-answer session, we will critique your speech as a group. Throughout your presentation, including the question period, you are advised to maintain a professional demeanor, though this does not mean that you must be formal or stiff.
Presentation: You can read, speak from notes, or deliver your talk from memory, but know that the most effective speeches have at least the appearance of a certain spontaneity. A speaker who reads verbatim from a sheet of paper invites doubt as to her sincerity and expertise. Whatever method you choose, you would be well advised to practice, probably a few times, to avoid stumbling during your presentation and to ensure that your speech fits in the allotted five minutes.
Though you should keep a copy of the notes or full text of your speech, you do not need to submit anything in conjunction with this assignment.
Unit Three, Predraft One (P3.1)
Read carefully the assignment for Unit Three. Keeping this assignment in mind, come up with one or two phenomena or behaviors that could serve as the topic of your essay. For each topic you come up with, also think of what might serve as the “raw material” for that topic and where you would find it. Finally, for each topic, write a sentence or two saying why this topic would make an interesting choice for this assignment. These sentences might be interrogative, posing some questions that drive your own research into this material.
Please e-mail to me your topic(s), ideas for raw materials, and sentences about why these topics are interesting by 5pm on Friday, March 26.
Unit Three, Predraft One (P3.1)
The essay assignment for Unit Three calls upon you to analyze a phenomenon having to do with computers, presenting this information for an audience that is not very familiar with your chosen phenomenon. While the bulk of your essay will be devoted to an exploration of the meaning or significance of your phenomenon—what it can tell us about computing, human beings, technology, modernity, etc.—some part of your essay will have to describe the phenomenon in enough detail so that you can go on to analyze it effectively. One of the challenges of this sort of essay is offering a description of your phenomenon for your reader that is interesting enough to draw her in, compelling enough to convince her that there is something worth studying about this phenomenon, and informative and accurate enough to serve as a basis for your analysis, all while leaving room for your analysis and without drowning out your own voice. This predraft exercise asks you to focus on this “descriptive” moment of your essay.
In no more than four hundred words, or about three paragraphs, offer a concise and gripping description of your phenomenon. Imagine your reader as a modern American person who happens not to be familiar with the particulars of the phenomenon you have chosen. Your description should make the thing sound like it is worth studying, probably by highlighting certain strange or initially inexplicable aspects of this phenomenon. You are effectively providing the exposition of a story, setting up the elements that are intriguing, but not yet launching into the actual plot.
Often, an essayist will rely on the colorful accounts of others, perhaps participants or witnesses, to provide an exciting description of the object under study. You are welcome to use the best words of other authors as small or large parts of your description, provided, of course, that you include appropriate citations. Not only does this technique make for lively descriptions, and not only does it add to the truth-claim of your description (because it comes from an eyewitness), but it also brings your reader closer to the object of study, in some cases by placing it before her. For example, if you provide a transcript of an IM conversation, you are not just describing your object of study, you are actually offering that object to your reader.
In addition to your descriptive paragraphs, please list the sources you plan to use in your essay. Indicate which of these sources is the raw or untheorized one. (You may have more than one such untheorized source, but you must have at least one.)
This assignment is due, by e-mail (in-line) on Tuesday, November 1, before class. I may also ask you to bring a copy to class on Thursday, November 3, for peer editing.
Unit Three, Predraft Two (P3.2)
NOTE: THIS ASSIGNMENT IS OPTIONAL. Submit it if you want feedback.
The Unit Three assignment emphasizes a move toward broad themes. Looking over your raw material, you are required to draw implications about what this phenomenon means for human beings, technology, modernity, computing, the future, etc. This predraft assignment asks you to specify those implications.
In one or two paragraphs, summarize the broad implications you have discovered in the course of studying your raw material. While the essay will need to demonstrate the validity of your reading by showing the connections between your phenomenon and the implications you draw, this predraft assignment does not need to be a proof of your claims. Rather, you need only say what those claims will be. If possible, it would be helpful to mention the aspects of your phenomenon that lead you to these implications. That is, you may connect your implications to one or more “hotspots” in your raw material.
Also include in your paragraphs a reference to one or more of the theoretical articles that you plan to use in your essay. What does this theorist have to say about your implications? Are you refining the ideas from one of these articles? Applying them? Disproving them?
Please e-mail to me your one or two paragraphs by noon on Sunday, November 6. We may look at some of these predrafts together in class on Tuesday.
Unit Three Essay Assignment
What Is It About the Computer?
Write an essay about some phenomenon related to the computer. Choose a cyber-social phenomenon (examples: teens and IM, MUDs/MOOs, on-line romance), computer-related activity (web design, hacking, home video editing), hot-button computer issue (Macs versus Windows, security and cyber-terrorism, media convergence, open source software), or any other aspect of the way computers are a part of the human world. Then, in your essay, explore this phenomenon in an attempt to draw some general conclusions about its meaning for our culture, for human nature, for technology, or for computing.
Your essay should make use of at least two different kinds of texts. First and most significantly, you should work with texts that offer an “untheorized” account of your phenomenon. (In academic discourse, a text is not necessarily made of words but could also be film, sound, still image, TV program, recorded conversation, correspondence, website, fiction writing, etc.) So, if you choose to work on IM, you might use transcripts of IM conversations as untheorized texts. Or you might use newspaper articles about the IM craze. Or you might even study the various implementations of IM software, to see what sorts of possibilities they open and limitations they impose on the conversation. If you choose to study media convergence, then you might look at TV ads for new technologies, or white papers that Sony puts out to describe its media convergence strategies, or the history of standardized ports for connecting machines to each other. In general, the untheorized or popular text(s) will serve as raw material for your analysis. Ideally, this raw material will not only provide evidence for your claims but will reveal something to close inspection that is not immediately available at a first glance. You might think of this raw material as a set of clues, and your job is to figure out what they point to.
The second kind of text that you should work with in your essay is theoretical. The exact role that such texts play in your essay is up to you. They are available to you as sources of ideas and models for your thinking. This essay is not primarily a research paper in which you summarize or synthesize other texts. Rather, your job is to think about the broad meanings of a phenomenon or behavior, to consider the significance of computers or of something that people do with them. Theoretical sources might help spur your thinking in this direction of breadth. You might argue against, agree with, refine, or take another stance with regard to the ideas of one or more theorists. Stretching the analogy a bit too far, if the raw material is a set of clues, then the theoretical texts are methodologies for your investigation, or magnifying glasses that help to reveal what is amiss among the seemingly mundane clues. Some essays might rely heavily on theoretical texts, while others will mention such a text only in passing. For help finding appropriate theoretical texts, consult the instructor or, even better, an expert librarian.
Challenges: The most difficult aspect of this essay will probably be the openness of the assignment. In effect, you are being asked nothing more specific than to write an essay about computers. I anticipate a further challenge: once again, you must negotiate a problem of particular and general, connect the particular phenomenon you choose to study with general questions about culture or technology. You may feel as though you lack the expertise to make such connections. To overcome this difficulty, I recommend that you allow yourself to think (and write) freely, writing down any ideas or interpretations of your phenomenon that come to mind, no matter how wild or far-fetched. (Perhaps IM reminds you of the telegraph. Perhaps newspaper websites all tend to look unnecessarily like paper newspapers. Perhaps the way people talk about open source software reminds you of the way they talk about political party candidates.) Then, choose the most promising of these thoughts and examine them critically. (What about IM seems like telegraphy? Why would these two technologies resemble each other? Does this say anything about the future of IM?) This process of free thinking followed by critical editing is one way to produce original and incisive writing, and will likely serve you well in all your writing projects.
For this essay, you can assume that your audience has only a passing familiarity with your topic. You should describe the phenomenon you are analyzing, supporting your description with appropriate citations. However, the bulk of your essay will be an analysis of the computing phenomenon you are focusing on, so keep your descriptive passages as concise as possible, including only the information your reader needs to follow your argument. Though not primarily a research paper, this essay will involve some research. Please take the opportunity to show off your citation skills, including proper formats and a full bibliography.
The length of the essay should be appropriate to the subject matter. I am imagining essays of six to eight pages, but YMMV, as they say on the chat boards.
This time for real, please append a paragraph or two to both draft and revision in which you offer some self-critique.
Drafts are due at noon on Wednesday, November 9, at 3pm, by e-mail. Revisions are due at the start of class on Tuesday, November 29, again by e-mail.
Unit Four, Predraft One (P4.1)
This predraft is to ensure that you have begun to think about Essay Four before Reading Period. Please submit one or two paragraphs in which you offer a proposal for the final essay of Expos. Proposals should include a brief mention of what raw material you plan to use (film[s] or game[s]), as well as some suggestions as to what you plan to do with that raw material. Are there particular questions that motivate your research? Do you have a theory that you plan to test? Is there a problem that you think needs solving? Given that motive is the most challenging aspect of this essay, your proposal should include at least a hint of what will motivate your essay.
Proposals are due, by e-mail, at noon on Saturday, May 1.
Unit Four Writing Assignment
Write a review of a computer or video game. The game can be recent or old. It can be for adults or kids. It can be for Windows or GameCube, etc. Pretty much any computer or video game is appropriate material.
Length: While there is no length requirement, I imagine that a thorough and appropriate response to this assignment will be three or four (double-spaced) pages.
Content: Your chief aim is to say whether or not this is a good game. But you should recognize that this evaluation is not a simple one, as “good” can mean many different things. Include consideration of who is the intended audience for the game. Who would likely enjoy playing it? How does it compare to other games in the same genre? In what ways does it break new ground and in what ways is it just a repetition of familiar tropes? What are its chief pleasures? Does it involve lots of thinking or is it a “twitch” game, all about hitting the right keys? Does it make good use of the controls, or is it clumsy or limited? A good review goes beyond this evaluation, offering a lively and engaging description of the game, as well as a context or history. And the best reviews penetrate to the essence of the games they analyze, not just offering a thumbs-up or -down but providing an insight into what makes this game what it is.
You are encouraged to include in your review a consideration of your game, and gaming generally, from a broader perspective, along the lines of the readings by Douglas and Friedman. What does your game tell its players? What sorts of attitudes or beliefs does it instill? What buried politics or presuppositions does it make? What kinds of freedoms does it offer the player and what sorts of constraints does it impose?
Research: To prepare your review, check out some other reviews of computer and video games on the Internet and in print. The New York Times publishes game reviews and commentary, as do many other non-specialist publications. There are hundreds of websites devoted to reviewing games. If you have trouble locating examples, please let me know and I’ll steer you in the right direction.
Audience: Your audience for this assignment consists of MIT students and faculty. Do not assume that your reader is an avid gamer, but you may assume that she is at least familiar with the usual gaming platforms and has played a few games herself, at least casually.
Due date: Please email me a copy of your review—as an attachment—on Thursday, December 8, before class. We may look at some of these together in class, so also bring a paper copy to class that day for peer review.
Unit Four Essay Assignment
For the fourth and final essay of the semester, choose one of the following two options. Whichever of the two essays you choose to write, the length should be appropriate to the subject matter. Essays are due in my mailbox at 5pm on Saturday, May 15. As usual, please append a brief self-critique and send an additional copy of the essay to me by e-mail.
(1) Film and the digital
Digital technologies have had a massive impact on the film industry. Not only is the digital increasingly becoming the medium in which films are created, edited, and even projected, but many films of the last half century take the digital as their subject matter.
Using one particular film (of your choice) as a primary text, write an essay that considers the relationship between film and the digital. You may choose a film from the list below or choose any other film. Your essay will probably address the question of film and the digital from one of the two perspectives discussed above: either you will think about the impact that digital production technologies have on the film in question, or the question of how the film represents digital technologies. You may want to do some additional research, especially if you are investigating the role of digital technologies in the film’s production, but I can imagine writing this essay as a close reading of the film with no additional research, as well.
Like every essay assignment in Expos, this one is challenging. For on the one hand, the subject matter of your essay has already been outlined for you by the assignment. On the other hand, there is nothing obviously arguable or contentious about the way the digital relates to a particular film. Sure, the film features computers in “starring” roles. Sure, digital effects are prominent in this film. But so what? Your challenge will be to find a motive for this essay, a reason why such an essay should be written. What is it about the way that film relates to the digital that is important, challenging, or worth considering? Films now routinely use digital technologies in their creation and many films portray digital technologies on screen — after all, films reflect culture and culture is steeping in digital technologies — but why does it matter? One way to approach it is to read the film as representing certain attitudes within culture about technology. Films portray a fantasy, an aspect of the cultural unconscious; films play out our fears, our desires, our ideologies. How does the filmic representation of the digital jibe with reality? What does the film’s use of digital technologies say about our culture?
Films:
Alphaville
eXistenZ
The Matrix (1, 2, or 3)
The Thirteenth Floor
Ghost in the Shell
Blade Runner
A.I.
The Lawnmower Man
Tron
Toy Story
Jurassic Park
Forrest Gump
The Terminator (1, 2, or 3)
Johnny Mnemonic
Virtuosity
Minority Report
Panic Room
2001: A Space Odyssey
Star Wars (plus sequels 2-5)
(2) Computer games
Computer games are the most rapidly growing area of entertainment, taking in more money last year than the film industry. Overwhelming percentages of college-age and teenage people play computer games, and these statistics cross ethnic, class, and gender boundaries. Computer games have been linked to violence, but also to increases in certain kinds of intelligence. Computer games offer a highly compressed view on the microcosm of computer use, challenging personal computers to perform to their utmost in every technological dimension, from video, to audio, to user control, to communication. Computer games combine the aesthetic with the technological, the storytelling of film with the active engagement of games. Some have said that the computer game is the quintessential computer program, the mass entertainment medium for the computer age.
Using one or more computer games as your primary text(s), write an essay that examines the meaning or implications of computer games. Does the computer game represent a particular political or social ideology? Is the computer game driven by the technology available to it? Do the aesthetic decisions in the game derive from film, TV, or other media? How much is the computer game like a story? What role does the player have in the game? Where is the player when playing the computer game? Why is it fun to interact with a computer? How much freedom does the player have, and how much has been determined in advance by the designers? Do aesthetics matter, or is the look of the game just “window-dressing” for an activity that is all about reflexes or logic or luck? Will computer games always be “toys for boys” or is there a good reason that young women are also rapidly joining this crowd? Is the violence really violent, or only play?
Once again, the challenge of this essay is motive. There are plenty of interesting aspects of the computer game, but it is not enough just to examine something interesting. You must write an essay that has a reason to be written, an essay that says something broader than just pointing out some (interesting) aspects of the game.
You may choose your “raw material” from this list, or use any other game(s) you like.
The Sims (and other “Sim” games)
Civilization (1, 2, and 3)
Doom (and other first-person shooters)
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Pong
Medal of Honor
Alien v. Predator (1 and 2)
Deer Hunter
Tetris
Snood
Everquest (and other MMORPGs)
Heroes of Might and Magic
Myth (1, 2, and 3)
Myst (and sequels)