The Syllabus

What follows is a list of readings in the field of Information Sciences and Communications. The goal? A more complete education in the field. Consider this my DIY, open-access PhD.

• The Information, A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick

• Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble

• Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan

• Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age by Dennis Duncan

• The Glass Cage: How Our Computers Are Changing Us by Nicholas Carr

• Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari

• Technics and Civilization by Lewis Mumford

• The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI by Dr. Fei-Fei Li

• Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman

• Why Fish Don't Exist by Lulu Miller

• The Power to Name: Locating the Limits of Subject Representation in Libraries by Hope Olson

• more to come

from The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by Gleick

Language is not a technology, no matter how well developed and efficacious. It is not best seen as something separate from the mind; it is what the mind does. "Language in fact bears the same relationship to the concept of parliament," says Jonathan Miller: "it is a competence forever bodying itself in a series of concrete performances." Much the same might be said of writing -- it is concrete performance -- but when the word is instantiated in paper or stone, it takes on a separate existnece as artifice. It is a product of tools, and it is a tool.

As we consider the impact of generative AI on instruction, we have to focus on the mind first. What is the student thinking? What ideas are they trying to express?

Well before the intrusion of AI, we knew that when a student didn't have something to say, the writing wouldn't hang together, even if the grammar was correct and the required structures were all present. AI is doing the same thing. It doesn't have anything to say. So, how do we build assignments so that students have something to say? My potentially controversial take: avoid hot topics. Yes, let them choose, but don't let them default to traditional paper topics. If the general idea is to examine a local problem and consider solutions, that's a step in the right direction. But what if that problem wasn't homelessness or affordable housing (paper topics)? What if, instead, they were writing about the problem of all the Krystal's in town claiming their milkshake machine was broken? Or the way the gas pumps are so slow at the station by their house? Or what if they were encouraged to write about their job at Publix and how many people refuse to return their grocery cart? I can hear student voice more fully in those assignments than in ones asking them to have opinions on issues they'd never considered before.

I wonder what would happen if we step outside of academia and move students into questions of identity and taste and values. Make the assignment about their voice. They want to be heard. Give them a concrete performance where they are doing more than just learning someone else's choreography.