Chad Wellmon

mcw9d@virginia.edu

GETR 3590/MDST 3559

MW 3:30-4:45

Office hours: W 1-3

 

The Future of Humanity: Technology, Media, Nature

 

This course is an experiment in media studies. What would be the intellectual and ethical benefits of thinking of media and technology not simply as artifacts or platforms (iPhone, Facebook, Twitter, the telegraph, books) but as everything that comes between. What would it mean to study media as all that is in the middle––between humans and nature, humans and humans, humans and god, humans and nonhumans? What mediates our relationships to ourselves, others, and the things we desire? What if we practiced media studies as a sustained reflection on what it is to be human and, perhaps, nonhuman? In order to address these experimental questions, we shall read texts from Plato and Aristotle to Heidegger and Gibson and consider the ever-evolving boundaries between and among humans, nature, and technology.

 

Requirements

 

No lap taps are allowed in on your desks (100%): Please take notes with pen or pencil and paper. Bring your reader or text to class.

 

Commonplace Book (20%): This is a reading notebook in which you transcribe puzzling or favorite passages, record your reactions and thoughts, and, in general, translate your reading into handwriting. Please purchase a composition or a similar type notebook. You should aim to write at least two pages per classroom period. Due 10/1 and 12/2.

 

Midterm (30%): Due 10/19 by 5pm.

 

Final (30%): Due 12/14 by 5pm.

 

Film Review (20%): Choose two films to review in a 3-page essay. Due by 12/7 by 5pm. (fuller description to come)

 

*Note on Mid-term and Final Exams *

Both of these will be take-home essay exams. They will consist of 3­4 essay

questions to
which you are limited to a response of no more than 300 words each.

From the day I post the exam questions on Collab, you will have exactly one week to

turn in typed and printed responses to my office. All exams are open book but you

are expected not to discuss the exam with anyone else.

 

 

Required Books

Reader

Plato, Timaeus (Penguin Classics) 978-0140455045

Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis (Wiley-Blackwell) 978-0882951263

William Gibson, Neuromancer (Ace) 978-0441569595

 

Schedule

 

Key Concepts: Media, Technology, Human, Nature

 

Monday (8/31)

John Durham Peters, “Introduction” and Chapter 1, Marvelous Clouds*

 

Greek Concepts

 

Wednesday (9/2) and Monday (9/7)

Plato, Timaeus (focus on 29d-68d) and Laws (Book X)*

 

Friday (9/4)

John Durham Peters, “God and Google” Lecture at Watson Manor, University Circle 3, 2pm.

 

Wednesday (9/9) and Monday (9/14)

Aristotle, Physics (Book II, 192b8-200b)* and Nicomachean Ethics (Book VI, 1138b17-1145a12)*

 

The Book: An Ancient Technology?

 

Wednesday (9/16) and Monday (9/21)

Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Learning (Book 1, I-XXII)* and Confessions (Book I and VIII)*

 

Print, Humanism and the “New Science”

 

Wednesday (9/23),

            Johannes Trithemius, In Praise of Scribes (Chapters I-III, V-VII, XIV)*

 

Monday (9/28) and Wednesday (9/30)

            Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis

 

10/5: Fall Break

 

10/7: No class

 

Monday (10/12)

            Thomas Hobbes, from Leviathan (3-57)*

 

Wednesday (10/14)

            La Mettrie, Machine Man (1-40)*

 

 

Melancholy Moderns and the Threat of Technology

 

Monday (10/19) and Wednesday (10/21)

Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology”*

 

Monday (10/26) and Wednesday (10/28)

Herbert Marcuse, from Chapters 1 and 2 in One Dimensional Man*

Karl Marx, from Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, “Estranged Labor” (70-81)*

 

Monday (11/2) and Wednesday (11/4)

Jacques Ellul, “Chapter 1: Techniques” and Conclusion in The Technological Society (3-63, 79-133)*

Lewis Mumford, from Technics and Civilization (9-59, 364-436)*

 

 

Techno-Human Imagined

 

Monday (11/9) and Wednesday (11/11)

            William Gibson, Neuromancer

 

 

Cyborgs, Technical Perfection, and the Future of Humanity

 

Monday (11/16)

Donna Haraway, “Cyborg Manifesto”*

            N. Katherine Hayles, Chapters 1 and 11, How We Become Post-human*

 

Wednesday (11/18)

Jürgen Habermas, from The Future of Human Nature, “The Debate on the Ethical Self-Understanding of the Species”*

           

Monday (11/23)

            Andy Clark, from Natural Born Cyborgs*

Nick Bostrom and Rebecca Roache, “Ethical Issues in Human Enhancement”*

 

Wednesday (11/25): Thanksgiving Break

 

Monday (11/30) and Wednesday (12/2)

Francis Fukuyama, from Our Posthuman Future (3-17, 57-104)*

Michael Sandel, “The Case Against Perfection”*

 

Monday (12/7)

Nick Bostrom, “The Future of Humanity”*