The past score of years has changed the media environment dramatically.
New computer tools and technologies never before available to the
consumer have empowered individuals with the ability to create, acquire,
edit, archive and publish media content in a way once reserved for
publishers and broadcasters. The opportunities to create new types
of trans-media cultural storytelling and interactive entertainment
are exciting.
Yet, the concentration of media ownership, coupled with the increased
militancy of intellectual property attorneys to protect client "rights"
restricts many of the iconic references to what might otherwise be
considered "popular culture". The concept of developing cultural icons
may become difficult to share when "look and feel" litigation may
accompany any such attempt.
What new forms of creativity and community will arise within this
new media environment? How are entrepreneurs and creative artists
exploring the media technologies and influencing popular culture in
the process? What can we learn from the lessons of the past?
This class will combine a critical analysis of historic and contemporary
media technology and its affect on culture; an examination of some
of its technical tools and artifacts (telegraph, radio, television,
cable, VCRs, computer games, synthesized music, Internet, DVR's, electronic
novels, computer art); lectures by media experts intimately involved
in the development, creation and use of these technologies, and an
opportunity to experiment and think through some of the implications
they portend. The focus will be on understanding the principals and
implications of this relatively young but encompassing medium, as
well as to develop a critical appreciation for its ability to alter
the social fabric on a number of levels.
Students are responsible for checking the course website each week
for any additional listing of readings and other assigned materials.
The class site is located at: http://web.mit.edu/cms.920/www.
Required Readings:
Brenda Laurel, Utopian Entrepreneurship. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press 2001.
Scott McCloud, Reinventing Comics. New York: Harper Collins
2000.
Course Pack, placed on reserve in the reserve bookroom
Other materials available on-line (see syllabus)
Additional Recommended Readings and Reference:
Chandler, Alfred D. Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic
Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries. New
York: The Free Press 2001.
Harries, Dan (ed.). The New Media Book, London: BFI Publishing
2002.
Koepsell, David R. The Ontology of Cyberspace: Philosophy, Law,
and the Future of Intellectual Property, Peru, Illinois: Carus
Publishing 2000.
Ledbetter, James. Starving to Death on $200 Million: the Short,
Absurd Life of the Industry Standard. New York: Perseus Books
2003.
Lessig, Lawrence. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. New York,
NY: Perseus Books 1999.
Lessig, Lawrence. The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons
in a Connected World. New York, NY: Random House 2001.
Lévy, Pierre. Becoming Virtual: Reality in the Digital
Age. Translated by Robert Bononno. New York and London: Plenum
Press 1998.
Lévy, Pierre. Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging
World in Cyberspace. Translated by Robert Bononno. New York and
London: Plenum Press
1997.
Morse, Margaret. Virtualities: Television, Media Art, and Cyberculture.
Chapter 21, Theory of Contemporary Culture Series. Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1998.
Rheingold, Howard. Tools for Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
2000
Spar, Debora. Ruling the Waves. New York & London: Harcourt
2001.
Stone, Allucquere Rosanne. The War of Desire and Technology at
the Close of
the Mechanical Age. 3rd Ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1998.
Vaidhyanathan, Siva. Copyrights and Copywrongs. New York and
London: New York University Press 2001.
Course Requirements:
CMS 21L.430/CMS.920
Interpretive question: (20 percent) Each week students are
required to submit at least one interpretative and thoughtful question
about the texts under discussion that week and one question intended
for that week’s guest speaker. The question should show a solid
grasp of the course material as well as being designed to provoke
reflection on the part of your fellow students, instructor, and guest
speaker. Your questions will help guide discussion of the course material
and we will distribute a set of the questions to the class as a whole.
Questions should be sent in by the Wednesday prior to the following
Friday’s class to csweaver@mit.edu
with a copy to susanj@mit.edu.
Mid Term Paper (5 pages undergraduate, 10 pages graduate):
(30 Percent) Research a topic of interest to you which grows from
the course concepts. Your goal should be to provide insight into the
larger process of media convergence through a specific case study
of a company, project, or trend. The topic for your paper should be
developed through consultation with the instructor.
Final Project: (40 percent) Working in a team, you
will develop a sales document/ business plan for a project in transmedia
storytelling. As explained throughout the course, transmedia storytelling
is a central aesthetic during an era of media convergence. In transmedia
storytelling, story information and experiences are conveyed across
multiple media. In some cases, each media courts a distinct audience
demographic. In most cases, these different media (streams) are intended
to be consumed in relation to each other. The ideal would be a situation
where each stream is relatively self-contained, allowing non-initiated
consumers to derive pleasure from the experience, and at the same
time, a more hardcore consumer can follow the story across multiple
channels and develop a more complex and layered experience of the
story world. You can either choose: (1) an existing work (which exists
currently in only a single medium) and describe how it might be developed
across multiple media channels or, (2) you can create your own original
property and outline its development. Your sales material should include
a description of the general property and an account of how it would
be developed across three or more different media, an assessment of
the likely audience for this material and how different kinds of audiences
might derive pleasure from this material, a discussion of the marketing
strategy for your product and some comparison to other recent works
in the same genre, some plans for expanding the audience and enabling
a more participatory relationship to the property. Your team should
be prepared to develop a thirty-minute presentation of your strategies
for developing the intended property across media and should include
a range of materials which provide a vivid sense of what the experience
might be like. Your materials might include: story boards, previews,
websites, computer-derived walk-throughs, free hand or computer graphics
sketches, advertising campaigns, posters, video, music, etc. The project
will be judged on the basis of its quality, creativity and originality;
its demonstration of an understanding of the core course concepts
and the utilization of them; its technical competency, and its grasp
of the current business environment.
Class Participation: (10 percent) While I do not take
attendance, I am nevertheless attentive to who attends regularly,
participates actively and asks intelligent, penetrating questions.
Code of Conduct:
Plagiarism -- use of another's intellectual work without acknowledgement
-- is a serious offense. It is the policy of the Literature Faculty
that students who plagiarize will receive an F in the subject, and
that the instructor will forward the case to the Committee on Discipline.
Full acknowledgement for all information obtained from sources outside
the classroom must be clearly stated in all written work submitted.
All ideas, arguments, and direct phrasings taken from someone else's
work must be identified and properly footnoted. Quotations from other
sources must be clearly marked as distinct from the student's own
work. For further guidance on the proper forms of attribution consult
the style guides available in the Writing and Communication Center,
14N-317, and the MIT Website on Plagiarism located at: http://web.mit.edu/writing/Special/plagiarism.html.