Seminar Introduction

Technology is increasingly playing a larger role in society. From clearly beneficial uses to more questionable uses, we are only beginning to understand how new technology impacts society. Furthermore, technology has the potential to greatly influence what "society" even means, and subsequently, how we participate in it. This seminar series focuses on new technologies and their impact on society.

Chuck Bazerman: Charles Bazerman, Professor and Chair of the Department of Education is interested in the social dynamics of writing, rhetorical theory, and the rhetoric of knowledge production and use. His interest in technologies focuses on how new forms of mediation change the socio-rhetorical landscape and how rhetorical practices may realize new forms of social cooperation and organization.  His most recent books are a collection of essays co-edited with David Russell on writing and activity theory, Writing Selves/Writing Societies, (available online at http://wac.colostate.edu/books/selves_societies/ ) and a methods book on textual analysis co-edited with Paul Prior, What Writing Does and How It Does It.  His book, The Languages of Edison's of Edison's Light , won the American Association of Publisher's award for the best scholarly book of 1999 in the History of Science and Technology.  Previous books include Constructing Experience, Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science, The Informed Writer: Using Sources in the Disciplines, and Involved: Writing For College, Writing for Your Self.  He is currently editing the Handbook of Writing Research and is editor of the Reference Guides of Rhetoric and Composition.

Bruce Bimber: Bruce Bimber is Director of the Center for Information Technology and Society and Professor in the departments of Political Science and Communication at UCSB. His research examines the relationship between evolving information technology and changes in human behavior, especially in the domains of political organization, collective action, social capital, and political deliberation. He is author of Information and American Democracy: Technology in the Evolution of Political Power (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Campaigning Online: The Internet in U.S. Elections (Oxford University Press, 2003, with Richard Davis), and The Politics of Expertise in Congress: The Rise and Fall of the Office of Technology Assessment (SUNY Press, 1996). (http://www.polsci.ucsb.edu/faculty/bimber/)

Jennifer Earl: Jennifer Earl is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research emphases include social movements and the sociology of law. Within the study of social movements, she is interested in the impact of the Internet on protest and social movements and innovative forms of online protest, among other topics. (http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/earl/)