"The change from atoms to bits is irrevocable and unstoppable" (Negroponte, 1996: 4)

Digital does matter is the sense that the conversion of different types of information - numbers, words, images, sounds - into digital form changes the way in which they can be stored, transmitted, reproduced and disseminated. This creates opportunities and threats, economic, social and political. (If you want to understand the underlying technologies then Lebow's book is a good introduction.) Feldman's book is also a useful introduction and reasonably up-to-date.  Pavlik covers a broad range of social, economic, technological and legal aspects of new media.  Two useful websites that explain some of the terminology of digital technology can be found at http://whatis.techtarget.com/ and http://www.webopedia.com/

The BBC website on The Communications Revolution gives a useful perspective on the impact of digital technology on the media http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/revolution/index.shtml

Looking into the future of the 'information revolution' is problematic. William Mitchell offers his view as to how new digital technologies will change our lives in E-Topia. Mitchell focuses on architectural and spatial transformation in the new 'digital electronic era'.

Castells' provides an analysis of the impact of new technologies on economy and society, which has been compared to Max Weber's Economy and Society. We will use several chapters in the course. The chapter for this week is about the comparison between the information technology revolution and the industrial revolution. You can find a book review at http://www.slis.indiana.edu/TIS/articles/stalder.htm

Finally to the 'digerati'. Negroponte is well known for his column in Wired magazine and his role at MITís Media Lab. His book, like Mitchellís (also from MIT) is a provocative and contestable view of how digital technologies are transforming everything.

The objective of this seminar is to examine different versions of how revolutionary digital technology is, and to subject these to critical scrutiny.

Core Reading:
o Castells, Manuel 'The Information technology revolution', Chapter 1 of Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996
o Robins, Kevin and Webster, Frank. Times of the Technoculture: From The Information Society To The Virtual Life.London; Routledge, 1999. (Chapter 3)
o Negroponte, Nicholas Being Digital, London: Coronet, 1996. (last chapter)
o Mitchell, William E-Topia: Urban Life, Jim - But Not As We Know It. Cambridge: MIT Press. 1999. (Chapter 7: reworking the work place)

Supplementary Reading:
o Lebow, Irwin. The Digital Connection: A Layman's Guide to the Information Age, New York: Computer Science Press, 1991
o Feldman, Tony. An Introduction to Digital Media, London: Routledge, 1997
o Pavlik, John V. New Media Technology: Cultural and Commercial Perspectives. Prentice-Hall, 1998
o Dertouzos, Michael. What Will Be: How the New World of Information Will Change Our Lives, London: Piatkus, 1997
o Dyson, Esther Release 2.0: A Design for Living in the Digital Age, London: Viking, 1997. See review at: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/nov1997/nf71121a.htm
o Leadbeater, Charles. Living on Thin Air: The New Economy, London: Viking, 1999
o Webster, Frank. Theories Of The Information Society. London: Routledge, 1995.
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