COMMS 305

Writing Technology and Digital Culture

Please note: this is archived course information from 2017 for COMMS 305.

Description

Examines writing as an object of study in technologised contexts of work and play. The course takes theoretical approaches to technological mediation, including interface and software studies, in order to consider the writer's situation in digitized writing environments that add multiple tools and functions for understanding and fashioning self, work and world.

The premise of the course is that reading and writing practices cannot be understood without attending to the technologies and history of these same practices, and to the stored cultural knowledge that they mobilise. We look at texts on the history, theory and variety of writing technologies and literate systems, including cartography and cross-cultural encounter with the alphabet, the image-text of the page, the modern "form" and screen, the programming of intelligent buildings and public space, and the role that writing machinery plays in social and work worlds.

The course develops critical awareness of technical artefacts at work in writing environments, the ability to reflect upon the situation of writing (concepts, technology, politics), a theoretically informed sense of communicative technologies and codes that constitute lifeworlds, and the ability to manipulate the environment as a matter of design − to pose questions, pursue projects, and to construct criteria for their value.

Find out more about undergraduate study in Communication.

Availability 2017

Not taught in 2017

Lecturer(s)

TBA

Points

COMMS 305: 15 points

Prerequisites

30 points at Stage II

Restrictions

ENGLISH 364