The following are issues or topics that Prof. Liu is especially interested in, but you should not feel confined to these problems. The main goal is to think about an interesting problem that can be developed through close study of a particular work or works.

Sample Topics for the 4-page critical essay:

1. Looking at the work of Marshall McLuhan and/or Walter J. Ong, write a paper about how sensible it is to believe that media (particular forms of media and their technologies) determine or shape human consciousness and/or society. How far would you go with such a thesis? What limitations or problems do you see in the thesis? Is there a better way to formulate the influence of media on human society?
   
   
2. Prof. Liu has talked about works that exemplify the difference the computer makes in media ("new media"). He has for reasons of time had to under-emphasize the "communications" side of the problem. Juxtaposing McLuhan or Ong on writing and/or oral cultures to specific examples of contemporary online communications (e.g., e-mail, Usenet, chat rooms, instant messaging, file-sharing, etc.) write a paper about what difference the computer makes in communication. For example, is e-mail a return to certain forms of orality, to letter-writing, or something else entirely?
   
   
3. Warren Weaver, in his explanation of Claude Shannon's "mathematical theory of communication," makes a big point of how general the theory is. "This is a theory so general that one does not need to say what kinds of symbols are being considered—whether written letters or words, or musical notes, or spoken words, or symphonic music, or pictures" (p. 114). (See also p. 95, where he refers to music, the pictorial arts, the theatre, the ballet.) Write an essay in which you take up one of the social/cultural forms of "communication" that Weaver mentions (or any form of communication) and examine how it does or does not fit into the Shannon/Weaver theory of communication. For example, does music or ballet or any of the arts (poetry, theater, etc.) really work according to the information-theory understanding of the relation between signal and noise? (What is the "signal" of a poem? What is "noise" in a poem?)
   
   
4. Write an essay that appreciates Lev Manovitch's The Language of New Media but also does one of these things: point out an important shortcoming or contradiction in its thought, extend its thesis in some interesting way, or compares/contrasts it to McLuhan or Ong on media.
   
   
5. Write an essay that develops an interesting interpretation of any of the artistic, literary, or online works we are studying in the first part of the course. Or write an essay that compares or contrasts any two of these works.

Sample Topics for 8-page critical essay:

1. Write an essay that analyzes and evaluates cyberlibertarianism as a belief or practice. For example, compare John Perry Barlow's "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" to the Declaration of Independence.
   
   
2. Write an essay that develops a thesis about some aspect of William Gibson's Neuromancer.
   
   
3. Do a "close reading" of the work(s) of one or more of the digital artists we have looked at, and place that work in a larger context of meaning or evaluation.
   
   
4. Write an essay in which you critique, defend, or intelligently evaluate the position of the Critical Art Ensemble on the difference between the actions they recommend and "terrorism."
   
   
5. Write an essay that studies some aspect of the issue of gender or race in cyberspace.
   
   
6. Write an essay on Califia or Riven. Since these are large works, you'll want to be sure to focus on some particular aspect of them that allows you both to work closely with something concrete and to develop larger implications. For example, write an essay about the relation between words, pictures, and music in either Califia or Riven. Other topics: the paradigm of the "game," the concept of space, the nature of the navigation interface, the nature of history, the role of gender or race, etc.