Information State Across Ages
The Information State: from the Library of Alexandria to the Snowden Files With varying degrees of success, officials have long sought to rule rationally by collecting and mobilizing data. What technologies, institutions, and strategies make knowledge into power? What tools do states use to see, know, and read the world? In this course we will examine recent examples like the bureaucracy of modern surveillance or the 1960s chatbot ELIZA alongside such historical phenomena as the Incan knotted-string record-keeping system outlawed by imperial Spain and attempts to build libraries of all human knowledge. Whether or not we are dominated by the ‘information state,’ or live under ‘surveillance capitalism,’ understanding how institutions have used information as a means of control in the past can help us understand very modern controversies: redaction, authentication, metadata, indices, and searchability all have deep histories.
The Information State: from the Library of Alexandria to the Snowden Files With varying degrees of success, officials have long sought to rule rationally by collecting and mobilizing data. What technologies, institutions, and strategies make knowledge into power? What tools do states use to see, know, and read the world? In this course we will examine recent examples like the bureaucracy of modern surveillance or the 1960s chatbot ELIZA alongside such historical phenomena as the Incan knotted-string record-keeping system outlawed by imperial Spain and attempts to build libraries of all human k …Read more
This class was a little bit all over the place, but it wasn't bad at all. Professor Makleff has so much passion and enthusiasm for the topics in the course, but it could feel random at times, and topics we learned one week might not come back in the rest of the course. I really enjoyed our final research project on a novel of our choosing, and I would definitely take a class with Professor Makleff again.
This class was a little bit all over the place, but it wasn't bad at all. Professor Makleff has so much passion and enthusiasm for the topics in the course, but it could feel random at times, and topics we learned one week might not come back in the rest of the course. I really enjoyed our final research project on a novel of our cho …Read more
The description of the class was really interesting, but I wouldn't say that there was much of a common thread throughout the semester. Although the individual things we covered were generally interesting, I didn't really know what I was meant to be gaining from the course overall.
Prof. Makleff is a great guy who really is passionate about this course. Also as an advisor he really tries his best to keep the best interests of his students in mind. The class falls pretty flat though, and is really not engaging. Every class feels a little disorganized without a clear lesson or meaning, or even anything building up to a greater understanding of a subject
I enjoyed this class, even though the topic did not interest me all that much. Professor Ron is very nice and accommodating and the grading is pretty easy. Class usually consists of discussing the readings we had for homework and then discussing new pieces.