Technology and the Connected Self

In today's world of Twitter & Facebook, text messages and email, humans use technology to connect with one another in unprecedented ways. This course will explore how technological mediation shapes our relationships with one another, as well as with the animals and plants around us. Particular attention will be paid to how the technologies we increasingly depend on to communicate our thoughts to others actually shape how we think. While most of the course will focus on contemporary communication technologies, we will explore how earlier thinkers explored these same issues as they confronted one of the earliest technologies of communication—namely, writing itself.