Housekeeping:

• Are you late with your About Me page or your first Blog Post? Have you seen the walk-through videos? What happened?
• Comments: make them substantial and thoughtful. It’s not enough to say “good job”
• Important: select the right categories and always add featured images.
• Instructions: Disciplinary Technologies Presentation
• Next week: Wednesday is a Monday schedule! We don’t meet on Monday but will have class as usual on Wednesday, 6-7:50pm. Blogging deadlines remain the same.
• Let’s talk about your “Digital Persona”

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Reading/Viewing Quiz: Stephen Fry

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Discussion

• How do we define “technology”?
• If we were to describe a book to someone who has never seen one, what features would we give to define a book? In what ways are books technologies?
• Technology evolutions: Scrolls, Codex, Manuscripts, and Incunabula

• Early Print Culture: Invented in China c. 576 AD; does not arrive in Europe until 13th century (thanks, Marco Polo!)
  • Manuscripts crafted by hand, typically by and for the clergy (and later the nobility and aristocracy)
• Machine-printed books: Gutenberg creates first hand press in 15th C
  • Bible is the first book to be published (see above)
  • Protestant reformation  in 16c broadens literacy, printing, and access to books
  • Want to see a Gutenberg bible and other amazing early prints? Head over to the Morgan! The MET also has some fantastic early medieval books. Extra credit: post a selfie with an early (renaissance or medieval) printed book any time this semester for 10 bonus points!)

• How we do distinguish between digital and printed texts? What features do they have in common? In what ways are they specifically different?

Discussion of Eisenstein

Before you leave today: take a moment to write down a definition of “technology.” Consider our discussion today and your work in Blog #1. In particular, try going beyond the idea of technology as “digital” or specific to the post-modern world.

For Next Week:

• Read the assignments listed on the schedule page
• Post your Blog #2 (with the right category!! with a featured image!) by midnight on Saturday, February 11. Comment on two blogs by Monday, February 13, 5pm.
• Bring a draft of 5 questions you plan to ask for your Disciplinary Technologies Presentation, along with a draft of the email you will write your professor.