H79.2440 Lecture 4 Credits
Instructor(s): Rushkoff
The emergence of interactive technologies has profoundly altered our relationship to media and art from the position of passive spectators to that of active players. For longer than we might imagine, cultural theorists have foreseen these shifts, feared them, fought for them, celebrated them, and, clearly, misunderstood them. In this seminar, we explore the thread of interactivity in cultural media as well as the opportunities and perils posed by the associated rise of mass interpretation, authorship, and bottom-up organization. We trace the interactive imperative, from animated cave paintings and the alphabet to cut-and-paste novels and open source programming. We encounter literary perspectives from Walter Benjamin to William Burroughs, media theory from Walter Ong to Baudrillard, social critique from Adorno to Deleuze, cultural programming from William Burroughs to Donna Harraway, and play theory from Huizinga to Howard Rheingold, all in the context of the relationship of interactivity to autonomy and agency. We also cover the ideas and intentions of some of networking technology's pioneers, from Vannevar Bush to Norbert Weiner. Students are required to read approximately one book per week, lead one class discussion, supplement one class discussion with audio-visual resources, and write two short papers arguing a cogent theoretical perspective on new media. The tentative reading list for this course may be found at: http://www.rushkoff.com/itp/theory2006.html
