March 26, 2008

Lecture: You try to get a date (representation)

Key concepts: representation (two views), representation and identity, symbol, sign
Examples: "a woman's touch" on the telegraph key, "mean world" syndrome, minority representation on TV, Asian men never kiss, Me and You and Everyone We Know (clip)
In class: a live version of "The Turing Game" (see the Discussion Board for details)

Textbook: Handbook Ch. 1: Interpersonal Life Online

Class Reader: Case study: aloha.net

Theroux, Paul. (2001). aloha.net. FROM: Hotel Honolulu. London: Penguin. pp. 255-260. Password Protected Online Full-Text (PDF) [Get Password Help] Key concepts: notice the examples of the different meanings of "representation" in this story

Assignment: BLOG POST: Learn to "Read" Tech Ads

For this assignment, imagine you are the instructor of a course called "Communication Technology & Society." Your job is to explain how you can use advertising for a technology to explain how technology develops. To make things crystal clear to your students, you plan to teach your class with two specific examples of TV ads for communication technology. First, choose a topic that you will explain from the list below. Next, find 2 (or more) advertisements for a communication technology that can be used to explain your topic. Finally, write up your lesson and use your HTML skills from discussion section to include clips of the ads in your blog posts. (Note that this may not be possible with some video sources.)

Important tips: The best responses to this assignment choose example ads that are different in some way. For instance, "the first ad shows that technology 1 is an example of X, but the second ad shows that technology 2 is an example of Y." Or: "This ad from the 1970s shows X but this later ad from the 1980s is quite different."

Concepts to Teach:

• the certainty trough (from lecture)
• the configured user (from lecture)
• 2 different groups from the diffusion of innovations (from lecture and Handbook Ch. 12)

Update: The instructor's lecture notes that cover these topics are now online to make this assignment easier. (This is the only time the instructor's lecture notes will be posted online.) Download them here:

Diffusion-Certainty Lecture Notes.pdf

Possible sources for advertisements:

• YouTube -- The Commercial Group
• iFilm Commercial Channel
• The Errol Morris Commercial Archive
• The AdLand Commercial Archive
• The RetroJunk Commercial Archive (esp. try the category "other")
• Google Video
• Yahoo Video
• (Or find another source, or capture your own.)

Post an answer of at least 300 words to your blog. DEADLINE: 11 a.m. -- one hour before class begins.