Cultures of Computing
See description under subject 21A.504[J] .
Fall 2011
This course examines computers anthropologically, as artifacts revealing the social orders and cultural practices that create them. Students read classic texts in computer science along with cultural analyses of computing history and contemporary configurations. It explores the history of automata, automation and capitalist manufacturing; cybernetics and WWII operations research; artificial intelligence and gendered subjectivity; robots, cyborgs, and artificial life; creation and commoditization of the personal computer; the growth of the Internet as a military, academic, and commercial project; hackers and gamers; technobodies and virtual sociality. Emphasis is placed on how ideas about gender and other social differences shape labor practices, models of cognition, hacking culture, and social media.
Readings
- SES #: 1 · TOPICS: Introduction · READINGS: (no readings)
- Gardner, Martin. “The Ars Magna of Ramon Lull.” In Logic Machines, Diagrams and Boolean Algebra . Dover, 1968, pp. 1–27. ISBN: 9780486218939.
- Channell, David. “The Mechanical World View: The Clockwork Universe.” In The Vital Machine: A Study of Technology and Organic Life . Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 11–36. ISBN: 9780195060409.
- Descartes, René. Discourses 1, 2, 4, and 5 in Discourse on the Method of Properly Conducting One’s Reason and of Seeking the Truth in the Sciences . Translated from the French by F. E. Sutcliffe. Penguin Books, 1968, pp. 27–44 and 53–76.
- Pascal, Blaise. “The Wager.” In Pensées . Translated with an Introduction by A. J. Krailsheimer. Penguin Books, 1995, pp. 149–55. ISBN: 9780140441710.
- Swift, Jonathan. “A Voyage to Laputa.” In Gulliver’s Travels . Penguin Books, 1967, pp. 223–31. ISBN: 9780140430226.
- Babbage, Charles. “Difference Engine No. 1 and Of the Analytical Engine.” In Charles Babbage on the Principles and Development of the Calculator and Other Seminal Writings . Edited by Philip Morrison and Emily Morrison. Dover Publications, 1984, pp. 33–72. ISBN: 9780486246918.
- Augusta, Ada. “Countess of Lovelace.” In Charles Babbage on the Principles and Development of the Calculator and Other Seminal Writings . Edited by Philip Morrison and Emily Morrison. Notes by the Translator on L. F. Menabrea’s Sketch of the Analytical Engine. Invented by Charles Babbage, 1842. Dover Publications, 1984, pp. 245–52 and 284. ISBN: 9780486246918.
- Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature . Routledge, 1990, pp. 149–82. ISBN: 9780415903875.
- Wilson, Elizabeth. “Introduction: The Machine Has No Fear.” In Affect and Artificial Intelligence . University of Washington Press, 2010, pp. 3–24. ISBN: 9780295990477.
- Papacharissi, Zizi, ed. “A Networked Self.” In A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites . Routledge, 2010, pp. 304–18. ISBN: 9780415801805.
- Boellstorff, Tom. “The Subject and Scope of this Inquiry” and “Personhood.” In Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human . Princeton University Press, 2008, pp. 3–31 and 118–50. ISBN: 9780691135281.
- Gershon, Ilana. The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media . Cornell University Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780801448591.
- Thacker, Eugene. “Biocomputing: Is the Genome a Computer?” In Biomedia (Electronic Mediations) . University of Minnesota Press, 2004, pp. 87–114. ISBN: 9780816643530.
Prerequisites & course information
Same subject as 21A.504[J] , WGS.276[J] Prereq: None U (Spring) 3-0-9 units. HASS-S
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Fall 2011
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.