LitMUSE

New Media

HUMN 4460: Senior Seminar

This course explores our inexorable movement from atoms to bits: from media based on the physical (record players, tape recorders, VCRs, newspapers, books, records) — what some would call “dead media” — to that based on the movement of digital information (computers, VR, DVRs, MP3, hypertext, video-on-demand). Both the theoretical and practical will fall under the purview of this course: not only will we examine hypertext, but we will be involved in the construction of our own.

The course will also focus on images of the digital in art, especially literature; that is, how will the notion of artistic production and consumption change as the virtual world becomes ever more integral to our everyday lives? We will attempt to define the role of new media in our lives and predict how our lives will change in the near future because of this paradigm shift in the flow of information.

Big Jelly

As a companion site to LitMUSE, Big Jelly contains essays, notes, and commentaries on science fiction, new media, and futurism. If you’re looking for secondary sources on your studies in this class, you could do worse than consult Big Jelly before other web resources.