Author Archives: Robert Lestón

Readings for class: Barthes studium and punctum from “Camera Lucida,” Barlow and Leston “For the Love of Zoe.” Here is the Barthes’ excerpt. It’s also in the dropbox. Print out the Barthes piece and bring to class. Make sure you … Continue reading →

The Postman article is posted. Please go to readings and access it from there. Make sure to print it out and have it with you in class. We’ll be having a standard, 10 question quiz at the beginning of class. … Continue reading →

Dear Students, I look forward to seeing everyone on Tuesday, 3/10. This blog post should clarify what’s going on and get us caught up. Let me start with some basic announcements and then your blog post assignment due on the … Continue reading →

Hi Folks, We ran out of time before I could discuss the blog post in class that would have been due this week. We have such a small class and we were missing a couple of folks, so I’m going … Continue reading →

Nicholas Carr – Is Google Making Us Stupid? Cory Doctorow — You do like reading off of a computer screen

An essay to help explain these two anthropological ideas Mumford mentions.

Writing restructures consciousness. 1. What is meant by this? Name one way in which this takes place. 2. Explain what becomes possible as an effect of writing that is not an effect of print. How does writing change the oral … Continue reading →

For this post, I want you to pick something from the reading that you find terribly interesting and important and discuss why up on the blog. A few paragraphs.

On Tuesday, we’ll spend some time talking about Jack Goody and Ian Watt’s The Consequences of Literacy that we didn’t get to last class. We mentioned that we need to unpack how Goody’s piece is related to the Phaedrus, something we’ll … Continue reading →

Hey Folks, Just to let you know, the full version of the syllabus is now up.Please check it out. Also, if you are missing any work from the beginning of the semester, please get on that. See you tomorrow!

I’ve altered the Goody reading slightly. Rather than the essay on the “Domestication of Savage Mind,” which is a little too bloated for our purposes, I’ve decided a better piece is going to be Jack Goody and Ian Watt’s “The Consequences … Continue reading →

Readers of the Phaedrus have often wondered how the dialogue hangs together. The first “half” seems to be about love, and the second about rhetoric. A slightly closer look reveals that any such simple characterization is misleading, because the first … Continue reading →

Part 1 First, I want  you to introduce yourself to the class. Tell us a little about your background and tell us about your future plans and career goals. Part 2 This course is called “Introduction to Language and Technology.” At … Continue reading →