CLASS 4632 - [Data Corruption’s Deep History]

(crosslisted) ARKEO 4618, COML 4615, MEDVL 4718, STS 4618
(HB) (ALC-AS, CA-AS, HST-AS)

Spring. Not offered: 2022-2023. Next offered: 2023-2024. 4 credits. Student option grading.

Intended for: advanced undergraduates. Co-meets with ARKEO 7618/CLASS 7630/MEDVL 7718/STS 7618.

C. Roby.

How can studying the deep past of information storage and transmission help us understand our current engagements with information and contemplate its future? In this course we will explore the materiality of information-bearing artifacts over the long history of semantic inscription. From cuneiform tablets to digital media (whose veneer of immateriality disguises the complexities of the material mechanisms of storage and transmission), we will study the shifting materialities of the matrices through which information is stored, transformed, shared, and obliterated: compilations and remixes, piracies and hacks, inscribed objects and their digital “surrogates.”