Cyberculture - 1st semester
Code
722011033
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Department
Ciências da Comunicação
Credits
10
Teacher in charge
Jorge Martins Rosa
Weekly hours
3 letivas + 1 tutorial
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
In this seminar, we aim at identifying the features and the conditions of possibility for the appearance (and contemporary dominance) of the so-called digital culture, or cyberculture. Instead of concentrating on the superficiality of the present, the seminar looks at the deep interpenetrations between the economical, social, technological and cultural fields that are disseminated in the concept and in the practices of cyberculture. Special attention will be given to founding texts and authors that may cast light on the connections between the «pre-history» of cyberculture and its contemporary practices. The student must be able to:
a) To identify the discursive clusters, as much as the practices, related to the term “cyberculture”.
b) To analyse, in a genealogic perspective, the authors and texts that are relevant to understand contemporary definitions and disputes surrounding the concept.
c) To gather a set of theoretical and methodological tools that allow the identification and the understanding of the discourse of cyberculture.
d) To apply, in a critical perspective, the acquired knowledge to contemporary reality.
e) To apply all this knowledge, in an original and autonomous way, to his own research, and present it in a clear and logical form.
Prerequisites
None.
Subject matter
0. Towards a definition of cyberculture: from «proto-cyberculture» to its omnipresence.
1. The binomium Embodiment (of information) x Disembodiment (of the subject).
1.1. Norbert Wiener and the rediscovery of the prefix “cyber”.
1.2. Connections to the mathematical theory of communication. Information at large.
1.3. Contemporary agencies (case study): The concept of cyberspace.
2. The binomium Human x Machinic.
2.1. Positionings: Human, Animal, Machine.
2.2. Between Alan Turing and Vannevar Bush: Emulation of intelligence or augmentation of intellect?
2.3. From Clynes/Kline to Donna Haraway: Cyborg as a sociocultural construction.
2.4. Contemporary agencies (case study): What is being a cyborg: from theory to practice.
3. The binomium Mechanic x Organic.
3.1. Instead of the mind, the body: Towards the post-human.
3.2. From mind to body, from body to code: Between the post-human and the post-vital.
3.3. Contemporary agencies (case study): Body and machine: euphorias and resistances.
Teaching Methods: Exposition and discussion of themes based on the analysis of texts (primary sources and critical bibliography). Students’ presentations and the participation in a collaborative project enrich the seminar, by introducing other cases and perspectives related to the founding texts of cyberculture and its contemporary agencies.
Bibliography
TOFTS, Darren, JONSON, Annemarie e CAVALLARO, Alessio (orgs.), Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History, Cambridge (MA) e Londres, The MIT Press, 2002.
HAYLES, N. Katherine, How we became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, Chicago (IL), University of Chicago Press, 1999.
DOYLE, Richard, On Beyond Living: Rhetorical Transformations of the Life Sciences, Stanford (CA), Stanford University Press, 1997.
MAZLISH, Bruce, The Fourth Discontinuity: The Co-Evolution of Humans and Machines, New Haven (NJ) e Londres, Yale University Press, 1993.
BOLTER, J. David (1984), Turing’s Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age, Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 1984.
Teaching method
Being a post-graduate seminar, the teacher’s presentations must be previously prepared by students’, that must read the supporting bibliography, to potentiate critical discussion. The student’s presentations will enrich the seminar, by introducing other cases and perspectives related to fictional modes.
Evaluation method
Participation in class and preparation and execution of a research paper, in three stages: project, with workplan and preliminary bibliography (20%); oral presentation in class, and its discussion (20%); final written essay (50%). The remaining 10% consist in the participation in a collaborative wiki project on the vocabulary of cyberculture.