The text for the course is "Being Digital" by Nicholas Negroponte. This is a 247 page paperback that we will read in it's entirety in the first half of the semester. The schedule is below. Keep up with the reading, as our first exam will have questions posed from the reading through Chapter 12.
From the description on the back of the book:
"Knowledgeable, argumentative and entertaining, Nicholas Negroponte writes about the future with the authority of someone who has spent a great deal of time there." - Douglas Adams
The book you are holding (get a grip on one..) is probably obsolete: it consists of atoms, which are bulky and cumbersome to transport. And, increasingly, the dominant units of human interaction are bits - "the DNA of information" that has made possible everything from personal computers to CDs. Now the full implications of this sea change are made comprehensible in a landmark book by Nicholas Negroponte, who as a columnist for Wired Magazineand a founder of MIT's Media Lab may be the Thomas Jefferson of the digital revolution.
Being Digital decodes the mysteries and debunks the hype surrounding bandwidth, multimedia, virtual reality, and the Internet. It forecasts technologies that will make your telephone as context sensitive as an English butler and replace TV broadcasters with intelligent "broadcatchers" that assemble and deliver only the programming you want. And this lively, breathtakingly timely book suggests what being digital will mean for our laws, education, politics, and amusements - in short, for the way we live.
Week One: Chapters 1 to 3
Week Two: Chapters 4 to 6
Week Three: Chapters 7 to 9
Week Four: Chapters 10 to 12
Week Five: Chapters 13 to 15
Week Six: Chapters 16 to 18