This is the page for: Media English
(Course-related content will appear here in reverse chronological order: the newest things at the top of the page, and older posts toward the bottom.)
Reading Free Culture
Folks,
I’d love it if we could get through all of Free Culture, and I’m still considering whether that’s possible. Lessig’s style is a lot easier to read than Sterling’s, but there’s still some touch vocabulary there. Still, I think it’s worth looking at, especially since Korean copyright and IP law is about to become a lot more like American law — except more restrictive.
So anyway, for now, I’m going to suggest you work on getting through the first few chapters — we’ll be reading all of Part 1, at the very least, as well as later sections, so you can’t go wrong working on those chapters, as well as the introduction and the Flash lecture I mentioned in class.
We’ll also discuss the exaggerations and fantasy-descriptions of hackers and hacking in the film Hackers, which we watched last week while you were recuperating from exams, and I’ll have a handout or two for you to check out next week, about the status of Korean internet censorship and filtration.
For April 29th and May 1st
Someone messed up — I think at the bookstore — and our comic book was never ordered. I was furious. Ah well.
Instead, we’ll talk about what we’re going to be doing for the second half of semester on April 29th, and probably take a look at the movie Hackers on May 1st, if I can get my hands on it.
Midterm Exam
Hi folks,
A few of you have emailed asking about our midterm exam. I mentioned the basics in class, but I’ll go over it again here.
You need to be ready to discuss The Hacker Crackdown. That is, not just repeat what Sterling wrote. What I expect is the following:
- You should be able to discuss the basic concepts and ideas in the book. For example, you should be able to list the Four Stages of a Technology from Part I, and apply it to various technologies: telephones, the Internet, cars, whatever.
- You should be able to offer your own opinion on these same basic concepts and ideas in the book. For example, you should be able to argue whether you think that Sterling’s model of the Four Stages of a Technology is correct, or outdated, or doesn’t apply to all technologies. Or you should be able to point out how it works differently for certain technologies.
- You should be able to discuss the basic argument of the book as well. Sterling provides profiles of companies, hackers, computer cops, and civil libertarians. You should be able to discuss them in various ways.
- You should have some ideas about why Sterling thinks Stanley’s invisible enemy is so important, and be able to apply it to any of the four major groups Sterling discusses.
- You should have some ideas about what Sterling means at the end of the book when he says it is the End of the Amateurs, and how it applies to the earlier content of the book.
- You should have some idea about all of this applies to your life, personally or as a society — that is, how questions of authority, ownership, and power get connected to technologies when we become dependent on them. You should have an opinion on this subject.
I also asked you, in our last class, some questions which WON’T be on the exam. The main point of those questions was this:
- I asked you to think about the idea of a Commons, or what is sometimes called a Public Domain, when it comes to common and important technologies like The Internet.
- I asked you to consider who does, or should, have the authority to decide what can be published on the Internet, and how they ought to go about enforcing it.
- I asked you to consider whether the rights that the Civil Libertarians in The Hacker Crackdown were defendingshould apply to the Internet in Korea. I raised a few examples, such as Dog Poop Girl and photographs of a stranger’s foot, but you can think of other examples. I also asked you to consider whether free speech is more important, or less important, than security.
If you don’t have answers to these questions, that’s fine — they’re complicated, and we’ll be discussing them in detail in the second half of semester! But they’re worth thinking about, and considering them might make your answers on our exam more interesting. As I said, you’ll be writing a couple of short essays for me on our exam. I’ll see you Thursday!
Plagiarism Warning
Let my comment on this post on the Media Blog page be a warning to you all. I do not tolerate plagiarism in any form, and any occurrence after today will result in an F in the course, no exceptions.
The student who wrote the post deleted it, against my wishes. However, I will make one point very clear. Anyone who simply copies-and-pastes some content from the internet into this Media Diary risks getting an immediate F in this class. My tolerance for plagiarism is ZERO, no exceptions, no excuses. If you’re copying-and-pasting, your cheating. And I will kick you out of the class for doing it.
I will not be warning anyone again.
Finishing up with The Hacker Crackdown
Next week, we’ll be finishing up our reading of The Hacker Crackdown by:
- discussing section 4 of the book (on Tuesday & Thursday, April 15th and 17th)
- discussing (on Thursday, April 17th) the overall ideas and themes in the book, and discussing some questions. I will make the questions available in the next couple of days, here on the website.
Remember that your reaction papers to the book are due on Tuesday, April 15th. Hopefully, this will help you prepare for our discussion on April 17th, as well as for our midterm exam.
Your midterm exam will be on the afternoon of Thursday, the 24th of April, and will be focused on general issues discussed in The Hacker Crackdown. The exam will definitely require you to have thought about the issues we’ll discuss in the past weeks, and next week; in addition, you will be required to express your opinion on one or more subjects in short-answer and short essay questions. So spend some time thinking about issues we’ve discussed, and spend some time outside class arguing with classmates about them.
Classblog Installed!
The class blog for this class has finally been installed. See the sidebar (under “Student Writing Sites”) for the links to register, login, and view the blog.
Make sure you join the blog for the right class!
I haven’t styled the pages, though I may get around to that later this week. But try register and login and see what happens. And please talk to me after class (or email me) if you have any problems with the system!
You are expected to start using this blog in the coming week. Good luck!
For March 25th/27th…
For March 25th, we will continue and conclude our discussion of Parts 1 and 2 of The Hacker Crackdown and I will make an attempt to sum up what we’ve figured out so far. I’ll also have a couple of discussion questions for the group. Depending on time, I will also introduce you to the classblog so that you can start on your media blog posting next week.
For March 27th, we will have a somewhat more light class. Since this is a media class, I’m declaring March 27th Youtube Day!
Therefore, you have until March 27th to choose your favorite Youtube video, which you will present to the class. Now, it’s not enough just to play the video. You need to explain why it is so brilliant, funny, important, or exciting that you have decided to spend classtime on it. That is, you will make a short presentation about the clip and explain to us why it’s interesting, why it’s related to the subject of media, or why it’s so brilliant.
One piece of advice — it’s better to show us something that isn’t posted from the mainstream media. If you show us a funny clip from the Simpsons, just because it’s funny, that’s less impressive than showing us something like this clip, because there’s a lot more to talk about:
If I were going to present the video above, I would discuss how:
- “LiberalViewer” uses various video clips to illustrate his point
- How he has enough time to discuss politics at a depth most TV programs never do
- Whether there are legal issues involved in his use of video clips
- The fact that “LiberalViewer” is a pseudonym, and how anonymity often makes it easier or safer to engage in political criticism
- The comments related to the video
… and so on.
However, don’t feel as if you need to necessarily post a serious clip. One clip I considered presenting, but decided not to, is this one:
If I were presenting about this video, I’d present it this way:
- I’d show the video, as-is, and then…
- I’d explain the context a little bit (about how a Philippine prison is using synchronized dance as a method of rehabilitation and therapy for prisoners (and whether it’s successful or not)
- I’d explain how this became an overnight internet sensation, tracing the links that appeared on Boing-Boing and so on, to find out how a Youtube video can go from having no viewers to millions of viewers in a short space of time
- I’d talk briefly about the idea of a “meme” or “viral video”
- I’d point the class to links of other synchronized prison dances uploaded by the same Youtube user.
So it’s up to you to do what you want. The only rule is, find something interesting to talk about. Oh, and by the way, nobody use my favorite video, which is a video by the Swedish techno group Familjen. We’ll talk about that in class.
And after the Youtube discussion, I’ll clear up any problems people are having with the Media English classblog, if there are any problems at all.
Don’t forget, we will resume discussions of Parts 3 and 4 of The Hacker Crackdown, on April 1st and hopefully conclude on April 3rd! So keep on reading the book and taking notes.
I’ll assign some discussion groups next Thursday afternoon (March 27th) to lead our discussions on April 1st and 3rd.
Have a nice long weekend!
Links and Stuff
Well, the time has come for me to provide some links for the various stuff you’ll need to prepare for this semester.
The first half of semester is especially intense. You’ll be reading a lot, so you need to get on top of the reading as soon as possible. The two books we’ll examine before midterm exams are the following:
The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier, by Bruce Sterling, is available in many formats (including PDF, RTF, Mobipocket, and other file formats — maybe even one compatiable with your phone?) at Manybooks.net.
If you’re getting together and printing a bunch of copies at a 복사 shop, I recommend using the RTF format, because there are some mistakes in the version available in PDF format.Also, if you are interested in the audiobook version, popular science fiction author Cory Doctorow (who is also one of the most famous bloggers in the world) has narrated the whole book and you can get it for free here (in both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis audio file formats.)Finally, as I noted, there was a Korean translation of this book publishedseveral years ago. I’ve never seen it, but Sterling has mentioned it at least once in an email to me. If you can find a copy, you might pick it up so that you can read through it in Korean first. However, I strongly recommend that if you do read it in Korean first, follow up with reading it in English, so that you have the vocabulary to follow and participate in our class discussions.
Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity by Lawrence Lessig.
This book is also available at Manybooks.net in a wide variety of formats. You can download the MP3 by bittorrent or from one of these two audiobook versions (version 1, version 2). If you’re printing up copies at a 복사 shop, I recommend using the PDF version available at the book’s promotional site.You may also find this useful: it’s a flash slideshow/narration version of the lecture on which the book was based. In it, Lessig explains some of the ideas of the book very clearly and simply, with great illustrations. It’s not a replacement for reading the book, but it might give you a better idea what the man is writing about if you view the slideshow first.
Finally, I’ll mention the name of the book you’ll be buying for this class: it’s actually a 2-volume set of the omnibus editions of the graphic novel Love as a Foreign Language, by J. Torres and Eric Kim. The story is about an intercultural romance in Seoul, and it’s interesting, odd, and will be a good break from the heavy reading of the first half of the semester. The comic books will be in the bookstore sometime in the next few weeks. Here’s a copy of the cover of each volume:
I’ll let you know when these arrive at the bookstore. It should be a couple of weeks.
Please note that unlike the two other books for the course, the Torres/Kim comics are not legally available online. At least one student has asked me whether he can photocopy or download these comics instead of buying them. The short answer is:
No.
These books were created by people who worked hard, and who have not decided to give their work away for free. When people do give their work away, as Bruce Sterling and Lawrence Lessig have done, that’s a wonderful thing. But when a creator decides not to do this, you should respect that choice and pay for their work. Otherwise, you’re not just stealing from them, but you’re also making it harder for them to keep working creatively.
If you went to a restaurant and asked, “Do you have any food for free?” you would probably be kicked out. This is no different, except that it takes many more hours to write a book or illustrate a comic book than it takes to cook a meal.
I know that copying textbooks is common in Korea, and that students expect it to be acceptable. I make every effort to find resources for you that are available online, for free, but will not tolerate illegal copying of books. If you come to class with an illegally copied book, I will ask you to leave, and not to come back until you have a legal copy. (If you want to understand why I will do this, you need to read the Lessig book all the way to the end. But just be warned: copying this comic book is not okay. Buy it, and be thankful the Sterling and the Lessig books are free.)
However, remember: it’s completely legal to copy the Sterling and the Lessig books linked above. Copy them as much as you like! As long as you’re not selling your copies for a profit, you’re following the law!
Anyway, for now, go ahead and start reading the introductory material and first section of The Hacker Crackdown.
Get The Syllabus Here
I handed out the syllabus for this class earlier this week, but if you need to get a copy, you can download it in PDF format.
Welcome to the Spring 2008 Semester!
Content — including your syllabus and any homework information for the first week of classes — is coming soon! Check back in a day or two!
Thanks!