Cybernetics and Cybercultures: The Psychosocial Impact of Digital Media

4 credits · Undergraduate

How have the realities and representations of digital media affected how we think, feel, and interact? What impulses, events, and personalities gave rise to the relentless digitization of information, choice, and even life itself? In this interdisciplinary course, we will attempt to answers these questions together by reading, discussing, and writing about histories and theories of cybernetics and cybercultures. We will consider competing cybernetic models of the mind, human behavior, ecological environments, and complex immersive virtual worlds. We will also survey the vast range of visionary, skeptical, and delightfully eccentric responses to the promises and perils of a cybernetic future.