The class schedule and some reading assignments for the Second Half of the course will be listed here. This list will be updated as we go along.
For July 29: The main thing here is to search the WEB for sites relevant to your Group Presentations This means doing reading in the net.wars book for material on communities, commerce, pornography, censorship. Also check the various references I have given below, and search for yourselves with the Search Engines. We will allow class time to go to the computer center and work on these in groups.
For August 3: I am going to ask Ben to focus on Chapter 11 from his book on Networking, as well as from Chapter 12 on Internet Commerce. You should also read the Chapter 6 of Inteface Culture for this date, on agents. Chapter 14 from Ben's book should also be read for this date or for August 10.
August 5 will be your class presentations. If you have these up on a WEB page, great. I will post the addresses on the class WEB page so people can access them. If you have not yet managed to post them, or even if you have, bring the presentation in HTML format on a 3.5 inch floppy disk. This file can be prepared in the Netscape Composer (Windows 95) or Netscape File Editor (Windows 3.1). The more reading you can do in the net.wars book for this date, the better.
August 10: Ben will talk about his new software for a World Wide Brain, which is described in Chapter 13 of his book. However, Ben has suggested that you might prefer to read the shorter and simpler description on his IntelliGenesis Corporation WEB site. This WEB site is of interest also from an Internet Marketing point of view. Please also read Chapter 14 for this date if you have not already read it for August 3.. We will also do review for the final on this date.
August 12: Final exam.
The final will cover the net.wars boo, the last chapter of Interface Culture,
and selected chapters from Ben's book and other readings to be assigned.
Your term essays are also due on this date.
The course syllabus is available at
http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/syllabus.98.html
The correct address for signing up for the class mailing
list is: majordomo@clam.rutgers.edu.
Send the two line message:
subscribe mlist-soc-socialmovements
end
For class on July 15, Ben has indicated that the most
important chapters to read from the World Wide Brain book are 1,
4 and 5. These chapters will be available as separate chapters on this
WEB site as:
http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/WWB.ch1.html
http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/WWB.ch4.html
http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/WWB.ch5.html
Chapter 8 and
chapter 9 are
also available on this server.
On July 8, Ben gave an assignment to use two different search engines to seek information on a topic of your choosing. You should type up and email the results to him by tuesday night, July 14. Follow the format in the assignment file. His email address is on the syllabus.
Ted assigned each student to read the an article
on internet searching in The New
York Times.
You should subscribe to the Times to do this, which you
will need to do for future assignments as well. The Technology/Cybertimes
section of the Times will be an important research source
for this class. Subscriptions are free.
For addresses of Search Engines, try the Bookmarks which
come with Netscape Navigator or log onto the New York Times CyberTimes
Navigator.
Some additional WEB sites which I expect to refer to
in class on July 13 include a Slate
article on Nerds.
This is on my WEB site since you must pay to access Slate directly.
The graphics will not come through. A beginner's
guide to HTML is available only for those interested in going
into HTML programming. Links
for Ben's class on July 15: are still available.
The site for Stale
magazine, a satire on Slate.
Unfortunately, you must pay for a subscription to read Slate, not a requirement
for this course. This is of interest for those working
on Internet Publications.
The site for the Palace Chat room. The New York Times article on Geocities and Geocities itself.
A New York Times article on Spam.
An interview with Edmund O. Wilson on the brain and society, from the Atlantic Monthly.
A Times article on making WEB sites more useable.
A list of suggested topics for presentations is at Topics.
A very interesting article on Sun Microsystem's plans
for distributed computing systems is in the New York Times of July
15; everyone should read this carefully before the midterm.
Details should be available on Sun Microsystem's
Web Site. There is a follow-up
article in the times of July 21, in the business section, dealing with
the legal issues in defining an operating system.
Please browse the Rutgers-Camden Computer Services page for or information on the Internet, including how to use Netscape Composer to write WEB pages, and for information on resources at Rutgers. Of particular relevance is the Facilities page which tells the hours the labs are open, and the Location of Equipment page which tells what equipment is available where. You are much better off looking for the Pentium computers instead of the 486 computers. I am told there are four of them in the back of room 109. They handle the Internet faster and have better software. Some instructions I have written on how to post a WEB page are now available.
For some samples of Hypertext Fiction, check the list on Yahoo. One which you might try is called Indecent Communication, it is described as "An electronic novel about Internet censorship, anarchy, bondage, Taoism and other fun things." You are warned, however, that "This novel contains graphic depictions of sexual activity. Please read my Statement Concerning Sexual Language and Situations," so do not read it if you are easily offended. Another is The E-Ville Dialogues, which is a complex multi-layered text with lots of graphics (which makes the pages load slowly particularly over the telephone). You can search out many others, including the authors mentioned on page 129 of Interface Culture, Carolyn Guyer and Mark Amerika, FEED magazine and SUCK magazine. You might try "The Story of X" on the FEED home page, which offers a novel format plus the option of reading a conventional format.
A sample
class presentation on the topic of Hyperlink Fiction is now available.
Use this as a model for your presentations. It was prepared in Netscape
Composer. We will demonstrate how to prepare such a file in class
on the 22nd or the 27th. Some instructions
on how to prepare a presentation in Netscape Composer were sent by email
and are also available here.
The New York Times has a story on
IQ Testing on the WEB.
For class on Monday, July 20, Ben asked everyone to read Chapter 8 and Chapter 9 of his World Wide Brain book. They are on this server as separate files, or you can find them in the manuscript on his server.
Information available now and will be updated as
we go along.
The July 20 edition of Time
magazine has a cover story story on Internet commerce.
This is of interest both for the commerce and for the publishing groups.
The WEB version seems to be the same as the one on paper. Time
also provides some interesting WEB
links on Internet Commerce. There
is also an interesting story on virtual
toy stores in the Times of July 27. Times stories may only be
avalable for a week or so, without paying $2.50 for a full archive search.
This story is 1900 words, but it is an example of the kind of essay you
should do for your term project. You should focus particularly on
the information about the use of the WEB, virtual reality, etc. It
includes links to a number of sites which are examples of what the author
is talking about. The Times
of July 30 has an article on Internet Shopping, concluding that it
is good for browsing but not for bargains.
The New York Times of July 20 includes a story on medical identification numbers which raise questions concerning privacy on a national medical data base. There is also a story on problems in chatting rooms, especially on America Online, which have become a "feeding ground for bulk emailers." There is also a story on the Times about systems which are being developed to combat junk emailers. These New York Times articles are more up-to-date than anything we could offer you in book form. Some of them are available only on the WEB edition of the Times.
For an interesting example of a personal WEB site, with music, try that of Ricardo de Castro Campos in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
To try out the Artificial Intelligence programs Ben demonstrated
in class on July 20, go to http://ciips.ee.uwa.edu.au/~hutch/hal/
in Perth, Western Australia. For four conversations
with the Eliza psychotherapist try http://www.word.com/newstaff/tclark/three/index.html
or you can try http://www.diemme.it/~luigi/node6.html#SECTION00041100000000000000
I do not know of any place to run Eliza online, however.
View some examples of Strange
Attractors from books.
Check out Bill
Gates' Mandala. For a more serious version of a Jungian
Mandala go to http://www.pcp.dtpnet.de/html/mandala.htm
The Times has a story on pending legislation governing
distribution
of pornography to minors, with links to other sources on the same topic.
I have put my lecture notes for the July 22 review lecture on the Web. These are notes, not a finished text, but they may be useful to you in reviewing. They should make more sense after you hear me lecture from them. Ben has also sent some review questions, which were not ready for Wednesday night. He also sent some answers to questions raised by one of the students.
The Times has an interesting article on "human multitasking" which raises the question of how people are starting to think more like their computers.
Two articles one on technical
progress in WEB video and one on
one reporter's experience with a Video concert from the Times should
be read before the Video presentation on wednesday july 29.
An article
in Slate
magazine includes a video clip of a drug TV ad,
showing how the "magazine" and "video" formats can be combined. You
must be a Slate
subscriber to view this, however. Another
Slate article shows clips of the famous Zapruder
film of the Kennedy assassination. There are hundreds of Kennedy
assassination sites.
On Wednesday we will also discuss the economics of the WEB, particularly the controversy about Microsoft. You may wish to review a Harvard Business School presentation on Applied Network Economics. The definition of Network Externalities is particularly important. You should also read an article from Slate magazine on the topic. (which I have installed at Rutgers for non Slate subscribers).
We will also view some more of the Triumph
of the Nerds . Those of you
who missed the first part might want to catch up by reading the transcript
of the text.
On the topic of censorship, there is a story in Cybertimes
about a
suit against a WEB site set up to criticize a newspaper.
On August 2, te Times ran a story about the Canadian
government's attempt to ban a pro-Nazi WEB site run out of California.
The question which is raised is whether one nation can regulate
a web site based in another. The site in question is listed
in Yahoo as
Zundelsite - I am a German-Canadian human rights activist and Revisionist,
engaged in restoring honor to the country of my birth and to all Germans
worldwide.
It raises some interesting questions about freedom
of speech, which is legally much more restricted in Canada than in the
United States.
On the topic of online communities, please read the NY Times review of the book Cyberville by Stacy Horn. This is an interesting book about culture and interpersonal relationships in an online community.
A story on access to the internet in rural communities from Slate.
The New York times page on their College
Program may be of interest for those of you interested in educational
uses of the Internet. They do not seem to have a similar page for
High School, but I am sure other sources do.
I have prepared a sample term essay on the topic Monopoly
and Competition on the Internet. It is about 1000 words, with
hyperlinks to relevant WEB sites, and references to concepts covered in
the course. There is an article in the July 29 Times about
Microsoft's
most recent strategies.
Information on how to post your files on a WEB page
is now available at http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/homepage.htm
Lecture notes
and links for July 29 are onlilne.
The July 30 NY Times has an article on a convention on hackers opening in Las Vegas today, which would be relevant for the security group. The hackers are getting older, becoming "consultants." There is also a story on a new anti-pornography law which may pass constitutional muster, an important story for the pornography group. There is another story on the hacker convention in the Sunday Aug 2 paper. More interesting is Hackstock by Lisa Napoli, a report on her visit to a Hacker's Convention in Amsterdam on August 7, 1997.
A July 31 Times story on VP Gore's Privacy Initiative will bring us up to date on this topic.
There are several stories of interest in the August 3
NY Times:
A story on Apple Computer's advertising campaign which
stresses Achievers who "Think Different". This related to the Triumph
of the Nerds and the history of the computer industry.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/08/biztech/articles/03apple-advertising.html
A story about online journalism gaining respect.
This one is a good example of an 1000 word essay (actually 1169, but who's
counting?) It has no hyperlinks, but they could easily be added.
You folks, however, are required to write your own essays, not
download someone else's!
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/08/biztech/articles/03online-journalism.html
A story about WEB sites aimed at Women.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/08/biztech/articles/03ivillage.html
And a story about the Chinese government deciding to
open up the Internet:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/08/biztech/articles/03hong.html
The August 5 Times has several
stories that are of interest to our course:
Amazon.com is extending its marketing beyond books and
CD's Although Amazon is still losing money, its owner is worth
$2.5 billion on paper. http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/08/biztech/articles/05amazon.html
The man who confessed burning his daughter alive to his
Internet chat room has pled guilty to the crime. The police found
evidence on his computer. He was frequenting a chat room used by
pedophiles. http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/08/biztech/articles/05email-confession.html
The United States Postal Service is contemplating giving
every American an email address, with a *.us file extension, and trying
to associate that address with the USPS as a server. http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/08/cyber/articles/05domain.html
America Online is growing, despite increased fees, and
actually making a profit.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/08/biztech/articles/05aol-earnings.html
There is also a story called "Students, Seeking a Leg
Up, Crowd into Summer Classes" in the paper edition and in the photo image
of the front page, but I can't find it in the WEB edition.
Something which may by of interest is the New York Times
archive service, offered on their special services page. You can
search the past 365 days of the paper for articles relevant to your essay
topic. It costs $2.50 for each article retrieved, but the first 10
are free if used in the first two weeks after you sign up. Plenty
of time for our course. There are several other services available
as well. http://www.nytimes.com/info/contents/services.html
For some suggestions on themes for term papers, look at
http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/papers.htm
These same themes might be addressed during the presentations,
or we may think of others. I'll update this file later with more
ideas.
Links from the Group Presentations can be found at http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/student_links.htm.
Some Review
Guidelines for the Final have from Ted been posted, as have some Review
Questions from Ben.
Some information
for class on August 10 has been posted. Note that new WEB sites
for student presentations have been added also.