Enrollment

Beginning on the first day of instruction, additional student-initiated enrollment in the course through GOLD is blocked so that the TAs can manage adding students to the course. However, students already on the waitlist in GOLD will continue to be auto-enrolled as spaces open up during the first week. (After Friday April 7, auto-enroll from the wait list will be turned off.)

From the beginning of the second week on, all course enrollment is managed by the TAs, who will give add codes based on available spaces to the waitlist, crashers, and enrolled students switching sections. Important: To assist the TAs in assigning add codes, any student not yet enrolled or needing to switch sections must fill out this Google enrollment request form between Friday April 7 at 2 pm  and Sunday April 9 at 12 pm (noon). This form is for students

• enrolled in the course but needing to switch sections,
• on the wait list,
• not on the wait list and crashing.

Section attendance in first week to hold place in course: Students must attend the section they are enrolled in during the first week of the quarter to hold their place in the course. (Students unable to make the section they are enrolled in due to conflicts, and also students on the wait list or wishing to crash, must attend some section in the first week to be allowed into the course.)

Attendance at Lectures

Students who attend lectures regularly have historically done much better in grades in this course. Prof. Liu will not be recording lectures or making slides available online.

Attendance and Participation in Section Meetings

16.67% of the final grade for the course is determined by a student’s TA on the basis of performance in a section’s in-person meetings and also Canvas online discussion forum. (TAs will provide instructions for participation in their sections’ online discussion forums.)

No more than one section meeting during the quarter may be missed without zeroing out the section participation grade. (Exceptions due to unavoidable circumstances must normally be requested in advance from a student’s TA.)

Grading

To pass English 25, students must complete all course and section assignments.

	Ungraded Assignments: There are three smaller assignments that are required to pass the course but that are not graded.
	Graded Assignments: For the graded essays and exams, the grading weights in the course are as follows:

Late Paper Policy: Late papers for which an extension was not approved by your TA in advance will decay by one partial letter grade for each day they are late. (So, for example, a B+ paper turned in one day late will become a B paper; a B paper will become a B-; or a B- paper will become a C+ paper.) Note: extensions must be requested from a student’s TA, not the professor.

Policy on Plagiarism and Other Academic Integrity Issues: Professor Liu reports all plagiarism and other issues of academic integrity without exception to the UCSB Office of Student Conduct. See Prof. Liu’s “Intellectual Property and Academic Integrity Guidelines for Students in Courses” for information, resources, and links on these issues. A recent addition to this policy document clarifies that the unapproved or undeclared use of generative artificial-intelligence tools such as ChatGPT to complete or assist with assignments is considered academic dishonesty.

Create your system for working with online readings.

Because so many of the readings in this course are online, students must develop an organized system for annotating and saving copies of online materials according to one of the methods described in Prof. Liu’s “Guide to Downloading and Managing Online Readings.” If you do not already have a systematic way to do this, start by saving and annotating two of the assigned readings for Week 1 of the course (originally PDFs) plus at least one of the readings for Week 2 that was originally a Web page. These are readings that you should download, store in an organized manner, and highlight or annotate.

For your section meeting this week, bring on your laptop or other digital device copies of these readings. If you do not own a laptop, tablet, or other digital device, then bring a printed copy of one reading that you have highlighed or annotated.

Essay 1: The Future of Media, Communication, Information

Essay Prompt

4 pages of double-spaced text (approx. 1,200 words, not counting notes, bibliography, and any images or other multimedia material)

Put yourself imaginatively in the year 2060 — about the time that many of you will have grandchildren. (This is a “near future” far enough ahead to get a generation or two beyond today’s trends, but not so far ahead as to inspire pure science fiction). Write an essay that draws on what you have learned about the prehistorical, historical, and modern development of media, communication, and information (including computing and the Internet) to give a prediction about media, communication, and (or) information in 2060. (Note: In choosing your specific focus or example, you can if you wish focus on the future of “old” media instead of new media–e.g., the future of orality, the future of the book, etc.)

Variants of essay that you can choose:

Variant 1: Consider how some other important aspect of the future — for example, the state of the environment or world resources in 2060 — will help shape the future of media, communication, and (or) information. However, be sure to keep your focus on media, communication, or information, not on another topic in its own context. (That is, if you are writing about the environment, for instance, focus less on details about the future of the environment per se and more on how the technologies, forms, or uses of media, communication, or information will be affected by that future).

Variant 2: Besides writing in a descriptive/analytical mode (e.g., “In the year 2060, information and communication devices will change in this major way …”), you can choose to write in a “fictional” or POV (1st or 3rd-person “point of view”) mode (e.g., “Jane woke up early and turned to her personal artificial-intelligence assistant …”).

Your essay will be graded based on a combination of the following criteria:

• Whether you draw on ideas related to the past and present of media, communication, and information that you have read about in the course. (If you do not refer to reading materials from the course in your explicit argument, add notes and links for the purpose).
• Balance between the specific and the general. (It’s a good idea to look at something specific as your case, but then also generalize from it in larger or different contexts.)
• Quality of your insight or vision.
• Cohesiveness and effectiveness of your argument (including organizational cohesiveness).
• Writing quality.
• And appropriate (but not excessive) links, images or other multimedia, and any other material useful in illustrating or exemplifying your thesis.

For citation style, use MLA style (or another style, so long as you are consistent).

See Prof. Liu’s” Guidelines for Writing a Good Essay”

See also the course’s “Intellectual Property & Academic Integrity Guidelines”

Submit Essay 1 as a Word document on Canvas here.

(If you created your document in Google Docs, “download” it in Word format for submission. However, please include in the Word version a link to your original Google Doc. Also share the original Google Doc with “commenter” permissions for your TA.)

Midterm Exam (50-minute exam in class)

Exam on readings in the course to date. The exam is more or less “factual” or “objective.” It is designed to see if students have done the assigned readings and recognize and comprehend key ideas, specifics, and other material. It will also reward students who regularly attend lectures by including some questions specific to material or comments the professor presented in lecture (i.e., “you had to be there”).

• There will be four sections of the exam:
  1. Short-answer — Questions will ask you to write a sentence or two about key readings, concepts, characters,  etc. (or sometimes just to fill in a blank with a word or phrase). An example of a question asking for an answer of no more than a couple of sentences or so might be: “According to Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates did not think very highly of writing. Briefly explain at least one main reason why, being as specific as you can.”
  2. Multiple-choice
  3. Identification — Questions will ask you to identify authors of key or representative passages in works. Full credit will be awarded for the full name of an author, correctly spelled (middle initials not required).  One point off for being able to give the last name only. (Note: this rule obviously does not apply in the case of any authors known only by a single name.)
  4. Bonus section for extra credit (multiple-choice format) — Questions will be based on the professor’s lectures. (E.g., “In explaining [a particular idea], the professor did A, B, C, or D.”)
• Works that will not be the basis of identification questions are listed below. (These works are histories, surveys, technical guides, and similar material, and thus not memorable for their own sake.) However, the major events, concepts, facts, etc. that these works cover–especially if emphasized in the professor’s lectures–are fair game for short-answer or multiple-choice questions:
  • Paul E. Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing
  • Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine
  • Richard T. Griffiths, “From ARPANET to World Wide Web”
  • National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), “Beginner’s Guide to HTML,” Part I
• (Students do not need to bring with them exam “bluebooks,” but bring a pen.)

Essay 2: Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49.

Essay Prompt

4-5 pages of double-spaced text (approx. 1,200-1,500 words, not counting notes, bibliography, and any images or other multimedia material)

Write an essay on The Crying of Lot 49 in which you use at least one reading from earlier in the course (e.g., Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, Plato, Alberto Manguel, Claude Shannon, Warren Weaver, Vannevar Bush, Lev Manovitch, etc.) to show how we can gain a deeper, richer understanding of some key aspect, idea, character, action, or stylistic/formal feature of the novel.

For citation style, use MLA style (or another style, so long as you are consistent).

See Prof. Liu’s” Guidelines for Writing a Good Essay”

See also the course’s “Intellectual Property & Academic Integrity Guidelines”

Using a spreadsheet program (e.g., Excel or Google Sheets), create a spreadsheet (or set of sheets) that compares:

• (A) The life of a typical college student at UCSB. (If you model your student after yourself or someone you actually know, please do not identify anyone by name for reasons of privacy.)
• (B) The life you think you will have in the future as a career worker or professional in the field of your choice. (If you have not yet decided on your dream career or profession, choose a possible one you could see yourself pursuing.)
• (C) Case’s life while “working” in his role as the hero of William Gibson’s Neuromancer (based on your deduction about what his life is like).

The following is a partial example of the columns/rows format you can use for an Excel, Google, or other spreadsheet for the English 25 assignment titled “Being Human in the Age of Information Knowledge Work”: download Excel spreadsheet    or Google sheet   . Feel free to vary this template if you have a better idea. (Optional: if you wish to be extra creative, make additional sheets in your spreadsheet to provide context or to dream of a better life. See this expanded Excel spreadsheet or expanded Google sheet with additional sheets for context [“All Career Workers”] and “what if”)

Adapt as needed the activity labels in this example (“sleep,” “eat,” “study,” etc.), but strive for some standardization (e.g., “eat” instead of “lunch”) so that general patterns are discernible. (You can also include other kinds of typical activities that are not appropriate for an instructor to make explicit in a template like this!)

For “total hours per activity over 7 days”, do a back-of-envelope calculation to scale up from the one typical weekday and the one typical weekend day.

As indicated in the example, add a brief explanation or comment in a cell with your observations on each kind of life.

(If you have spreadsheet skills, you can use formulas to calculate and/or graphs if you wish.)

Help resources for students new to spreadsheets:

• Excel:
  • WikiHow, “How to Make a Spreadsheet in Excel” (basic how-two told through screenshots)
  • Matthew MacDonald, “Creating Your First Spreadsheet” (chap. 1 from Excel 2013: The Missing Manual)
• Google Sheets:
  • Google, Help page for Google Sheets

Submission instructions: Submit your spreadsheet on Canvas here in any file format or as a link to an online file or online spreadsheet.

• If you are exporting from a spreadsheet to a format like PDF, please first select the portion of your spreadsheet to export so that you do not include all the unused columns and rows. (Instructions for setting a print area [or print-to-PDF area]: Excel | Google Sheets.)
• If you are submitting a link to an online spreadsheet or file, please be sure to share it with “commenter” permissions for your TA.

Essay 3: Being Human in the Age of Knowledge Work.

Essay Prompt

4-5 pages of double-spaced text (approx. 1,200-1,500 words, not counting notes, bibliography, and any images or other multimedia material)

After you have finished creating your spreadsheet comparison (see the required ungraded assignment for previous week), write an essay that substantively uses both the spreadsheet and at least one work from the section of the course on “The Postindustrial and Neoliberal age” (e.g., Gibson’s Neuromancer and/or one of the works byTaylor, Zuboff, Brown, Critical Art Ensemble, etc.) to explore the question: What does it mean to live a “human” life in the age of informational knowledge work? “Substantively” means that you use some key features of your spreadsheet and some key ideas or passages from the works in the course to help you frame and think through the issues. (To cite your spreadsheet when you refer to it, add a note with the name of your spreadsheet and any range of cells you are referring to [e.g., cells A3:A12], along with a link to the spreadsheet if it is online.)

Important: A key to writing on this topic is not to assume that there is an abstract, universal, essential, or timeless state of being “human” that goes without saying.  Being aware of how earlier or different societies have understood the “human” might help you think through some of the specific ways in which our time and culture are giving specific twists to the “human,” and why.

For citation style, use MLA style (or another style, so long as you are consistent).

See Prof. Liu’s” Guidelines for Writing a Good Essay”

See also the course’s “Intellectual Property & Academic Integrity Guidelines”

Final Exam (50-minute exam in our lecture room)

Exam on materials in the course (print and online) covered since the midterm.

The exam is more or less “factual” or “objective.” It is designed to see if students have done the assigned readings and recognize and comprehend key ideas, specifics, and other material. It will also reward students who regularly attend lectures by including some questions specific to material or comments the professor presented in lecture (i.e., “you had to be there”).

• The format of the final exam is the same as that for the earlier midterm. There will be four sections of the exam:
  1. Short-answer — Questions will ask you to fill in the blank or write a a sentence or two about key concepts, characters, names, etc.
  2. Multiple-choice
  3. Identification — Questions will ask you to identify authors of key or representative passages in works. Full credit will be awarded for the full name of an author, correctly spelled (middle initials not required).  One point off for being able to give the last name only. (Note: this rule obviously does not apply in the case of any authors known only by a single name.)
     The following works will not be used for identification questions (though their main ideas may be the subject of short-answer and multiple choice questions:
     • Joseph H. Boyett and Henry P. Conn, Workplace 2000
     • William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone, The Virtual Corporation
     • Wikipedia, “Markup Language”
     • Alan Liu, “Transcendental Data: Toward a Cultural History and Aesthetics of the New Encoded Discourse”

      

  4. Bonus section for extra credit (multiple-choice format) — Questions will be based on the professor’s lectures. (E.g., “In explaining [a particular idea], the professor did A, B, C, or D.”)
• (Students do not need to bring with them exam “bluebooks,” but bring a pen.)