A. For this assignment, you may write a conventional paper dealing with issues related to virtuality, cyberspace, or contemporary forms of technology and communication. If you take this approach, focus on some of the possible social, political, or economic effects of the applications and use of new technologies.

B. Alternatively, like Stone and Kroker, you may use some of these contemporary forms of technology to construct a paper or presentation that deals with some aspect of these same issues.

Some possibilities are:

• Obtain some documents from the internet and summarize them in a short paper.
• Make a videotape from TV with ads, segments of shows, etc. Provide a written commentary on these.
• Write a paper analyzing a film, music (along with an audiotape), etc. which is situated in the new technologies.
• If you have had any interesting or unusual experiences using the new technologies, write a story about this, using Stone’s stories as models.
• Use images in magazines and write a commentary on these. For example, you might take an issue of Wired or one of the PC magazines and analyze it.
• A review of one of the novels by William Gibson or another cyberpunk author.
• Anything else that relates to this topic. But check with me first.

Note:

• Regardless of which approach you take, refer to some concepts used by either Stone or Kroker in the assignment, either using their concepts or critiquing them, or both.
• If you use one of the less conventional approaches, referencing may be a problem. Provide reference sources as completely as possible, remembering that the main purpose of referencing is to allow the reader to be able to find the source you used.

Return to Sociology 304, Winter, 1999.