A graduate seminar in mobile technology, focused on the cultural contexts for those technologies and an interrogation of the unique affordances of mobile tech. This was a graduate course open to students in Georgia Tech’s Digital Media graduate program in the School of Literature Communication and Culture.
The syllabus is reproduced below.
LCC 6314 Design of Networked Media
Prof. Ian Bogost
Skiles 024
(404) 894-1160
ibogost at gatech dot edu
This seminar examines some of the many artifacts we loosely call “mobile devices” or “mobile technology,” including phones, iPods, GPS, handheld game devices, and soforth. The course seeks to (a) explore the varing cultural contexts of apparently identical technology and (b) to interrogate the unique affordances of these devices in order to expose new design opportunities.
We will focus especially on the often unquestioned relationship between mobile technology and urban modernity, often characterized by the move from isolated community to large, city-bound societies. The goal of reproducing modernity through mobile tech is exacerbated in America by our relative lag behind Europe and Japan, densely urban societies which have more in common with each other than with America. We will pay special attention to the dissonance between technological determinism in mobile tech as a celebration and advancement of modernity. We will be especially interested in asking what uniquely “American” mobile applications are, or would be, like.
Students will produce five or more mobile design prototypes, complete one in-class presentation, participate in weekly seminar discussions, and complete one major, formal research paper. Design prototypes will be left open to the student’s individual interests, but students are encouraged to complete one procedural prototype (with mobile processing), one voice-activated prototype (with VoiceXML), one TTS prototype (with Java toolkits to be provided), one camera- or computer-vision prototype (e.g., semacode or similar), and one open (wildcard) prototype. In addition to these prototypes, students are required to produce weekly design concepts to share.
Students are encouraged to bring additional readings and examples to class, and the one in-class content presentation may be based on a reading not included in the assigned list (please provide it to the class at least a week before).
The course will be conducted as a hybrid seminar/studio. Each week we will discuss the week’s readings, cover the infrastructure and technology topics, and students\ will present and critique each other’s work. Students are incouraged to prepare semi-formal presentations of their designs, including visual aids or digital/printed posters. Please note that not all of these presentations need be completed prototypes. Also note that overall presentation performance will factor into the final course grade; this is meant to give youmore experience presenting your own work.
Course Requirements
One (1) term paper (approx. 5,000 – 8,000 words) (40%)
Five (5) design prototypes (6 points each = 30%)
One (1) in-class presentation based on readings (10%)
Design workshop presentations and peer critique (10%)
Class participation, design workshop presentations, and peer critique (10%)
Strive to do one design a week if possible. The five prototypes will be turned in by the end of the course; this should give you the freedom to try different approaches and potentially abandon a few. The course’s many design workshops are meant to provide iterative design feedback. Designs should be prepared as webpages, PDF’s, etc. and will be turned in on a course swiki (to be created).
Work will be graded based on two factors:
Required Texts
The following books are available at the Engineers Bookstore or your favorite online bookstore.
Smart Mobs, by Howard Rheingold, ISBN 0738208612
The Condition of Postmodernity, by David Harvey, ISBN 0631162941
Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, by Fredric Jameson, ISBN 0822310902
America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940, by Claude S. Fischer, ISBN 0520086473
Perpetual Contact : Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance, by James E. Katz (ed),
The Mobile Connection, by Rich Ling, ISBN 1558609369
The Urban Revolution, by Henri Levebvre, ISBN 0816641609
America, by Jean Baudrillard, ISBN 0860919781
Tentative Schedule
That means it will probably change as we mangle it. Artifacts/reading assignments may be altered each week as we progress.
| Topic | Read/Do | |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1
January 12 |
No class meeting this week |
|
| Week 2
January 19 |
Modernity, Postmodernity |
Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, Chapters 1 – 6 Jameson, Postmodernism, Chapters 1, 4 |
| Week 3
January 26 |
America, the Rural, the Third World |
Baudrillard, America Lang, The Mobile Connection, Chapter 3 |
| Week 4
February 2 |
Cultural Contexts |
Ito, “Discourses of Keitai in Japan” (handout) Katz & Aakhus, eds, Perpetual Contact, chapters 2 – 9 |
| Week 5
February 9 |
Voice and Synchrony |
Fischer, A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 Lang, The Mobile Connection, Chapter 1 Shirky, Half the World |
| Week 6
February 16 |
Attend Living Game Worlds Symposium |
|
| Week 7
February 23 |
Procedurality |
|
| Week 8
March 2 |
Mobility and Locality |
Rheingold, Smart Mobs Nelson et al, Quiet Calls Okabe & Ito, Keitai in Public Transportation (handout) Geocaching 1 The work of Blast Theory |
| Week 9
March 9 |
Personal Data Access |
Costikyan, Toward the True Mobile Game (summary, article to follow) Lang, The Mobile Connection, Chapter 4 Shirky, It’s Communication, Stupid Applewhite, The BlackBerry Business |
| Week 10
March 16 |
Asynchrony |
Grinter, Eldridge, Design for the socially mobile: Wan2tlk?: everyday text messaging Lang, The Mobile Connection, Chapter 7 Bogost, Asynchronous Multiplay |
| Week 11
March 23 |
Spring Break |
|
| Week 12
March 30 |
Transmission |
Terrorism: 1 Want et al., Bridging Physical and Virtual Worlds with Electronic Tags Cheverst et al, Designing mobile interaction: Exploring bluetooth based mobile phone interaction with the hermes photo display TTS (coming soon) |
| Week 13
April 6 |
Cameras and Computer Vision |
Kato et al, “Uses and Possibilities of the Keitai Camera” (handout) Kindberg et al, I saw this and I thought of you Gesture-based games (MTG lab) Grinter, Words and Images |
| Week 14
April 13 |
Games |
History of the Nintendo Handheld contents of The Escapist, issue 2 Electronic Plastic (book, reserved in EGL, do not remove) A selection of handheld games (EGL) – Nintendo DS, GBA, PSP – especially consider WarioWare and Feel the Magic/Rub Rabbits Gamespot reviews of PSP games, DS games, GBA games Falk et al, Pirates: Proximity-Triggered Interaction in a Multi-Player Game Sanneblad & Holmquist, Designing Collaborative Games on Handheld Computers |
| Week 15
April 20 |
Tactility and Surface |
Rosen, The Age of Egocasting Wigdor & Balakrishnan, TiltText Poupyrev et al, Ambient touch: designing tactile interfaces for handheld devices Nintendo, WarioWare Twisted (EGL) Nintendo, Yoshi Topsy-Turvy (EGL) Chang & O’Sullivan, Audio-Haptic Feedback in Mobile Phones |
| Week 16
April 28 |
Storage |
Podcasting 1 |
| Finals Week
May 1 – 5 |
Demo Day |
|