Month: February 2018

As discussed in class, there’s an opportunity to earn extra credit by participating in an workshop this Friday and writing a one-page, 250-word report on what you learned and did at the workshop. Email your post-workshop report to Prof. Ellis before the next class.

Here are details on the workshop:

We will be meeting next Friday, March 2nd, to have the final Faculty Seminar on Topology and 3D printing, with a focus on the Mobius Strip and Klein Bottle. Please find attached two readings — one a historical perspective and the other a science fiction story by AJ Deutsch, as well as a link to one more reading, a science fiction story by Arthur Clarke.

The second part of the session will focus on 3D production of these topological forms and adaptions through Mathematica that can then be output to 3D printers. We look forward to seeing you there!

Time: 2:30-4:30 pm

Location: Voorhees V 811.

Readings for the workshop:

Arthur Clarke — pages 66-78: https://archive.org/details/Super_Science_Stories_v05n03_1949-07

David Richeson, “Rubber Sheets and Crazy Bottles,” in Euler’s Gem, pp. 156-72.

AJ Deutsch, “A Subway Named Mobius”

After class today, write at least 250 words summarizing your reading of Bruce Mazlish’s “The Fourth Discontinuity” and our lecture about it. Post your response as a comment made to this blog post before our next meeting.

For next class, remember to take a stab at Derrida’s essay linked on the syllabus. Do a Google Search and see what others have to say about it.We will discuss it during our next meeting.

Mischa Richter illustrated this comic for the New Yorker in its November 1, 1958 issue.

Mazlish begins his discussion referencing it.

 

Before our next class, write and post at least 250 words summarizing your reading and your notes from lecture on Walter Ong’s “Writing is a Technology That Restructures Thought.” Feel free to make connections between Ong and our previous readings, such as Klein or Mufwene.

For our next class, we will discuss Bruce Mazlish’s “The Fourth Discontinuity.”

In “Writing is a Technology That Restructures Thought,” Walter Ong discusses the part of Plato’s Phaedrus dialog that is germane to the topic of speech and writing. Nicholas Carr, a writer interested in the relationship between ourselves and our technology and author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, offers further explanation on Plato’s Socratic dialog here that might provide further background.

HC-ResearchMixer-PSTR-P

Before our next class (Thursday–remember, Tuesday follows a Monday schedule), post a comment to this blog post of at least 250 words summarizing your reading and today’s lecture. Since this was a formidable reading with advanced vocabulary, you can include some of the words and their definitions that many of you reported looking up during our discussion today.

Since we have a break before meeting again, use this time to catch up with all after-class writing assignments and post them on OpenLab. After we return on Thursday, all after-class assignments must be submitted on-time for full credit.

During our next class, we will talk about Walter Ong’s essay in our next class and practice using the library databases for your research project proposal and paper. In the meantime, consider your list of technologies and their relationship to language. Choose a technology to research that you think specifically influences how we use LANGUAGE (not simply how we communicate–look back at Fromkin for guidance on what we mean by language). Also, I would recommend choosing a technology that might have some utility for your career or for demonstrating your thinking about a technology that has a great deal of interest to you. Look at the Research Project link above for additional information about the proposal due in a few weeks.

Nancy Cruz sent me links to these two TED talks that might be worth watching. The first by John McWhorter explores the complicated nature of technology and language co-influence, and the second by Erin McKean argues that we should each take charge of language and invent new words when existing words are inadequate.

Before our next class, write a summary of at least 25o words of Stephen J. Klein’s “What is Technology?” and today’s discussion/lecture, and post your summary as a comment to this blog post.

Separately, spend a few minutes writing down as many communication technologies in your notebook. Bring your list to our next class for an exercise that will help you figure out your research project.

In this interactive story on The New York Times’ website titled “Welcome to the Post-Text Future,” you will find a number of stories and reported facts that are germane to the focus of our class on language and technology.