ANTH245 2007 Notes

Cybernetics

• Read something by Wiener, e.g. "Rigidity and Learning" in The Human Use of Human Beings.
• Pay much more attention to learning
• Connect learning and evolution early on
• Read only two essays by Bateson, on art and learning
• Read only Rapport 1971
• For L-S 1955, read only the middle -- exclude the set up (requires knowledge of history of anth) and the Zuni stuff (way too complicated)

Postmodernity

• Put Lyotard before Suchman, et al. → the latter follow closely the sporit of his recommendations
• Emphasize cyberpunk ... de Certeu?
• Focus on Community -- have students read Rheigolds, The Virtual Community
• Read Salam Pax's book
  • Exploit reversal of Blog into Book
• Focus on Lyotard's theory of games
  • Basis for study of blogging as an agonistic language game
  • Further basis for Manovich's take on games and the algorithm

General Remarks

• Bateson's opposition between Purpose Mind and Greater Mind pervades the course
• To what extent is Cybernetics the "backstory" of the computerized society?
• One possible course -- The Anthropology of Google -- would eliminate Suchman, etc.
• May want to divide the course into parts, integrate more activities
  • Cybernetic Anthropology
  • Computational Anthropology
  • Ethnography of Computing
  • Anthropology of Google (Cyberia)
    • Virtual Community
    • Hypertext
    • Databasification
  • Posthumanism