Prompts for Monday's Essay

Here are the prompts you designed for Monday's essay on Jaron Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget. I will modify the language, and I will incorporate a reviewer's statement into the prompt. You will see just two of these topics on Monday, so if you only prepare one of them, you are taking a significant risk.

1. How does technology affect what it means to be human?
2. Are technological advancements worth the constraints they put on us?
3. What are the mindsets that foster or undermine a humanistic approach to technological interaction?

Vacation Reading

Over the vacation, finish reading and annotating Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget. You do not have a writing assignment with this reading. On Tuesday, April 29, the first class after the vacation, we will develop essay topics for this book.

Assgnment for Thursday, April 17

Read and annotate to p. 147 in Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget. Also, write at least one typed page defining or explaining the ideal relationship between people and digital technology. Be sure to take Lanier's arguments into consideration as you develop your position. 

Assignment for Tuesday, April 15

Read and annotate up to p. 137 of Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget. You do not have a writing assignment.

Assignment for Thursday, April 3

Read and annotate to p. 44 in Jaron Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget. Pay particular attention to how he tries to persuade the reader of his point of view. 

Assignments for Monday, March 24, and Wednesday, March 26

For Monday, finish reading and annotating Press's Beautiful Souls (ch. 4 and the epilogue). There is no writing assignment.

On Wednesday, you will write an in-class essay on Beautiful Souls.

Assignment for Wednesday, March 19

In Press's Beautiful Souls, read and annotate Chapter 3, "The Rules of Conscience," pp. 85-129.  You have no writing assignment.