UMCP: CLIS: LBSC 708T/INFM 718T: Spring 07: Section 0101: Reading List

LBSC 708T/INFM 718T - Transformational Information Technologies
Spring 2007 - Section 0101
Reading List

The goal of the readings is to give us a common basis for discussion in the class. Think of them as a point of departure, not as the destination. Readings for weeks 4-7 will be assigned at least one week in advance by the team that will lead the discussion. Readings after week 7 will usually be assigned two weeks in advance by the team that will lead the discussion. See the Library Resources secion of the Useful Resources page for details on NetLib and e-reserve. E-reserve requires a password, which will be distributed by email and in class.

Readings for Week 1:

Janna Quitney Anderson and Lee Rainie, Pew Internet Survey on the Future of the Internet, 2006. Read the "Summary of Findings" section (pages i to viii) and the full description for at least one scenario (whichever one you find most interesting).
Thomas L. Friedman, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, Chapter 1 (While I Was Sleeping), Pages 3-47, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2005. Available (with password protection) through e-reserves
Alvin Toffler, Book TV "After Words" Interview, RealVideo, 54 minutes, C-SPAN, June 3, 2006.
Edward Cornish, An Overview of Futuring Methods, Web page accompanying publication of Futuring, Exploring the Future, World Future Society, 2005.
David Stork, Interview about 2001: A Space Odyssey at TheTech Museum of Innovation, 2001. RealVideo. View segments 2 (How much effort did Kubrick and Clarke put into getting the technology in the film "right"?) and 4 (What are some of the technology predictions that Kubrick and Clarke got wrong?), neither of which is very long.

Readings for Week 2:

John F. Healey, Reading the Past: The Early Alphabet, Section 1 (Script, Language and the Alphabetic Principle), pages 7-15, British Museum, London, 1990. Reprinted as pages 201-209 in Reading the Past, Barnes and Noble, 1998. Available through e-reserve.
Douglas C. McMurtrie, The Book: The Story of Printing and Bookmaking, Third edition, Chapter IV, (Paper and Its Origins), pages 61-75, Oxford University Press, London, 1943. Available through e-reserve.
Kotinos Publications, Libraries, History section (leftmost link on top bar), Web site, undated. Read the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Helenic, Roman, Byzantine and Medieval (Western) sections (in each case, you need to click on the subsection titles that are centered below the section title to see each subsection).
James Burke, The Day the Universe Changed, Program 4 (Printing Transforms Knowledge), videotape, 54 minute, Churchill Media, 1986. Available for viewing Nonprint Media Services (can not be checked out).
- Alternate if the videotape is unavailable: Neil Rhodes and Jonathan Sawday, The Renaissance Computer, Chapter 1 (Introduction), pages 1-17, Routledge, London, 2000. Available through e-reserve
Stephen J. Gould, "The Panda's Thumb of Technology," Natural History, 96(1)14-23, 1987. This was passed out during the first class session.

Readings for Week 3:

Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Second edition, Chapter 6 (Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries), pages 52-65, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1970. Available through E-Reserve.
Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, Fifth Edition, Chapter 1 (Elements of Diffusion), pages 1-38, Free Press, 2003. Available through E-Reserve.
Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovators's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, Chapter 1 (How Can Great Firms Fail? Insights from the Hard Disk Industry), pages 3-28, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 1997. Available through NetLibrary. Available through E-Reserve and through NetLib (which does not allow printing).
Robert Pool, Beyond Engineering: How Society Shapes Technology, Introduction (Understanding Technology), pages 3-15 (and associated notes on pages 307-309), Oxford University Press, 1997. Available through E-Reserve.