University Scholars 203
Technology and American Frontiers: an exploration of resources
...each technology is an extension of human lives:
someone makes it, someone owns it, some oppose it, many use it,
and all interpret it.
(David E. Nye, Electrifying America preface)
 Look here for the text of the syllabus as handed out.

 Cook barbed wire site at U. Va.  check it out as an example of a project!!

Links to  readings on Frontiers for 22 Jan meeting, and to the online forum

Some thoughts on web pages as  hypertext commonplace books and comments on  evaluation

Some Archy and Mehitabel links

An excursion on agricultural history prompted by reading Turner, and another on (well, starting from...) Hannibal MO which then leads on to ruminations on  Americans and Technology and several texts on  Luddites. Are we at a  new point? See what  Jerry Mander has to say, and compare with  David Nye .

A weblet more or less centered on  utopia and following various weekend thoughts.  And  Buckminster Fuller as an exemplary utopian. Another example is  Scott Nearing , and in some respects the daddy of it all is Edward Bellamy's  Looking Backward 2000-1887 . Another vision is  Gandhi's

The stuff I'm working on is silicon

Some materials on  manufacturing, enterprises and industries . Read  3 short texts ...and oh by the way the journal  Technology and Culture is now available in full text (though only the most recent issues).

Looking ahead a bit: we'll consider  steam ,  electricity , Fordism and 20th century industry in the first week of March, probably work on computers next, and then explore some technology-and-labor issues after that.

Computers: here's my  summary weblet and links to historically important articles by  Vannevar Bush and  J.C.R. Licklider .  Another interesting source is  Bowker's review article on some recent literature of cyberspace. (Please read AT LEAST parts 6-8 of Bush, and the first Licklider source) and if your taste runs to Stephen King, check out the short story (fable/parable)  The Machine Stops , by EM Forster (1928 --but absolutely up to date in some respects).


Web pages of participants:
Jordan Ginsberg   Tarah Grant   Aaron McCullough
Christine Metzger   Selanga Ranawaka   Julieann Ulin
 John Blackburn and my own weblet on  Technologies of Memory
These links provide background to the genesis of this course:

running log of ruminations and links
course proposal for Technology and American Frontiers: an exploration of resources
overall scheme (August summary), and a December addendum
materials for a presentation to the Virginia Collegiate Honors Council (September 19)