Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Teaching Day

Teaching resumes today, this term I'll be teaching Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The enrollments aren't too high and the subjects are enormous fun (for me, at any rate), so I'm thinking the commute will probably be the most arduous aspect of work this term, since the two campuses are on different sides of the City, and there will be lots of walking to stations, waiting for hideously crowded trains, standing at bus stations and so on to contend with. The rain is pouring down this morning as it has done all through break, and though this is a welcome reprieve to my drought stricken California it does make things unpleasant when you are lugging books around and pressed into steaming damp crowds of grim commuters fending off who knows what diseases all around you through the transbay tube. Today's class is my graduate biopunk seminar, and introductory lectures tend to be briefer ones so I'm hoping to have some of the day for myself in spite of work. It's a class I've taught before at Berkeley, years back at this point, and feels a bit dated to tell the truth. I can't get my art students to read nearly as much as I'd like to do -- this is understandable, they spend their days in art practices that are very different and differently demanding than what my Berkeley students think they're going to school for -- but it has the consequence of limited the extent and hence the range of my assignments, and freighting the basics with a lot of weight to the exclusion of lots of interesting stuff I initially fantasized about putting into the reading list. We'll see how it goes. I posted the syllabus below if you want a gander. Even if it could have been more, it should be fun and provocative as is.  

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