STS:  Computers and Society:  Summer 2000.
 

HYPERLINK ESSAY INSTRUCTIONS.

 Your term essay should be 1000 words on the following general topic:

The Impact of Recent Developments in Cyberspace Technology on one of the following areas:

Of course, your topic should be more specific, e.g., "How Colleges are Using the Internet to Enhance Instruction," "How Online Magazines are Competing with Paper Magazines," "How Scientists Are Using Computers to Create Simulations of Living Organisms,"  "How Chat Rooms and Online Communities are Changing Social Interaction Patterns,"  "How High Tech is Driving Our Economy (to Ruin?)."  You'll get plenty of ideas by surfing the articles on the Links on Computers and Technology page.

Write your essay as if it were going to be published in the New York Times - make it interesting, but also serious and responsible.  Your essay should include hyperlinks to at least ten world wide WEB sites.  Five of these must be reference sites from the Links on Computers and Technology page of this course, from the Technology Page of the New York Times on the WEB, or other computer-related  reference articles from other sections of the Times, such as the Education Section, or from other similar sources.  The other five (or more) should be sites that illustrate the phenomenon you are discussing.

Your essay should communicate a "residual message" with three major points, following the model explained in the Speech Communications Workbook from Pennsylvania State University.  They should be three points about how the medium of the Internet has made a difference on the social institution you are examining.

Your essay must be posted on your WEB site, and there should be a hyperlink from your home page to the essay.

The title, three major points, and five reference sites must be included as part of Assignment Three which is due at 6:00 p.m. on June 13.  The final paper will be due by the end of the semester, and instructions for submitting it will be posted.  It must be posted on your WEB site as well as turned in electronically to the instructors.

Your five reference points should be listed at the end of the essay, following the Modern Language Association Style Sheet for Documenting Sources on the World Wide Web or the American Psychological Association Format for WEB References or a similar format for hyperlink citations from an organization in your own professional field. Your references may be numbered, instead of indented as in the examples on these format sheets. The five illustrative links should be placed at the appropriate place in the text of the paper.

A sample outline and sample essay follow.
 

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Sample Outline, to be submitted as part of  Assignment Three:

1.  Type Your Name Here:  Ted Goertzel

2.  What is the topic of your Hyperlink Essay?  The Impact of the Internet on Book Publishing.

3.  What are the three main points you will make?  [NOTE:  These three points should be substantive sentences that stand alone, not statements of topics, e.g., they should not be:  1)  marketing books on the web  2) digital vs paper publication  3) digital/paper hybrids.  This is NOT an outline, it is a summary or abstract that conveys information even if you do not read the paper]

         1.  The Internet has been used successfully to market paper books, helping to increase book circulation.
         2.  Digital publication has not yet replaced paper publication on a large scale, but new technologies may make digital publication a more successful competitor to paper publication.
         3.  Some books are being offered as digital/paper hybrids, with the core text published in paper and supplementary material such as bibliographies available online.

4.   Now copy out points 1, 2, and 3 onto the Clipboard.  Go to WEBCT, and click on "Communication Tools" and "Bulletins".  Click on "Essay Topics" and "Post" your ideas as a message by pasting them in. Add any additional comment you care to make. Your message will have a number.  Type the number here: 23   .

5.  What are the titles of five readings from the Links on Computers and Technology page, the Technology Page of the New York Times Online,  or other sources of similar quality, that you will use?  Paste them in here, making each of them a hyperlink:  [Note:  These references should be typed in full, so they are legible on a printed copy.  They should ALSO be hyperlinks.  To easiest way to do this with Netscape Composer is :  1) type them  2) highlight the URL address and copy it onto the clipboard  3)  click on "insert link" and paste the URL into the box using the right mouse button.  If you use Microsoft Word to prepare your assignments and paper, it will probably automatically convert URL's into links.  In that case, be sure to save your work in html format, with a *.htm or *.html suffix, not in *.doc format.]

         1.  Carvajal, Doreen.  May 7, 2000.  "Judging a Book Without its Cover,"  The New York times [online].  Accessed on May 29, 2000 at: http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/050700ebook-review.html.
         2.  Carvajal, Doreen.  February 7, 2000.  "Digital Publishing: From Arthur C. Clarke to Psoriasis Tales," The New York Times [online].  Accessed on May 29, 2000 at:  http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/02/biztech/articles/07book.html
         3.   Carvajal, Doreen.  May 29, 2000.  "Books Get Shorter as Bibliographies are Banished to the WEB,"    The New York Times [online].  Accessed on May 29, 2000 at http://www.nytimes.com/library/books/052900web-bibliographies.html
         4.  Wyatt, Edward.  October 24, 1999.  "The High Road at a High Cost,"  The New York Times [online].  Accessed on May 29, 2000 at: http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/102499encyclopedia-review.html
         5.  Smith, Dinita.  June 12, 1999.  "Hoping the WEB will Rescue Young Professors' Books,"  The New York Times [online].  Accessed on May 29, 2000 at: http://www.nytimes.com/library/books/061299ideas-book.html.

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Sample Essay FORMAT.

The Impact of the Internet on Book Publishing
by Ted Goertzel
[Link your name to your home page - this does not count as one of your five illustrative links.]

    The invention of movable type by Johannes Gutenberg in 1451 was a revolution in communication technology that had profound implications for society and for the way people thing.  Books became much less expensive and circulated widely.  According to Marshall McLuhan, this encouraged linear thinking and shaped the mentality of the modern world.  With invention of television, McLuhan believed that reading would become less common, and the quality of people's thinking would deteriorate.  However, the invention of the Internet and other digital media, such as CD-rom disks, has combined video and written media in a new way.
    Some people feared that the availability of the Internet would undermine book publishing.  Why should people pay money to buy a book on paper, when they can download text free or at low cost online.  Surprisingly, however, one of the most successful Internet businesses, Amazon.com, was a bookseller.  It turned out that people still wanted to read books on paper, and they appreciated the convenience of being able to order them online from a stock much larger than in any "bricks and mortar" bookstore.   Amazon.com is now competing with barnesandnoble.com and other online bookstores for a huge market.
    This may, however, be only temporary.  It may be that the popularity of online reading materials will increase when better and more convenient wireless technologies are developed for reading digital materials.  One of the advantages of a book is portability, you need not be sitting at your desk in front of a computer to read one.  However, more and more people are carrying Palm Pilots and other mini-computers, and Internet technology is widely available in cell phones.  As the quality of the screen improves, and people get used to these technologies, they may find it more and more convenient to read books on these devices.  Or people may accept the inconvenience of having to read a book on a conventional desktop or laptop computer once the reader technology improves.  A number of entrepreneurs are gambling that this will be the case.  For example,  Stephen King's new novel Riding the Bullet, has is available only as an E-book.  It can be downloaded free, together with the Glassbook Reader that can be installed on PC or Macintosh computers.  A variety of competing e-book technologies are available.
    Electronic publishing may be especially popular for scholarly and textbook publishing, where it may make more materials available at lower cost.  At the New York University School of Dentistry, for example, students are given their entire four years' supply of textbooks and supplementary materials, including slides the professors show in class, on a DVD disk.  This disk is replaced each year with updated material.  This format may be more convenient, less expensive, and easier to keep current with recent developments in the field.  Scholarly books with limited audiences may be made available in this way when paper publishing would be too expensive.  To facilitate this process, the American Historical Society, with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,  is awarding Gutenberg-e prize to subsidize the electronic publication  of outstanding doctoral dissertations.
  ....................[This sample is 500 words,  yours should continue for 1,000 with more examples and end with a concluding paragraph.

[Then paste in the references at the end, from the html file for Assignment Three - these do not count as part of your 1000 words.  NOTE:  If you copy the references in composer, the links will also be copies.  If you copy them from a browser, they will not and you will have to reenter them.]