LIS 810
Information technology and information labor

University of Wisconsin-Madison
Library & Information Studies 810

Prerequisites: Graduate student or consent of instructor

4246 Helen C. White
M 5:30pm-8:00pm (see timetable)
Instructor: Greg Downey <gdowney @ wisc.edu>
Office hours: mornings, 5016 Vilas Hall

Course weblog
You will receive an email inviting you to the course weblog at lis810-labor.blogspot.com.  If you choose to join, you will be allowed to post comments to the weblog as the semester progresses.  Ideally, students should also post their "three questions concerning this week's readings" to the weblog as well. 

Course email list
To make sure that you receive all emails sent out about the class, check that your current email address is on file with UW by visiting either My UW-Madison (Student Record Tab, Preferred Email address module) or EASI (Extended Access to Student Information). The address of our class list is: lis810-labor@lists.students.wisc.edu ; regrettably, students are not allowed to post directly to the list because of spam and virus concerns.

About the course

Revolutions in information technology don't simply imply changes in media consumption; the social, spatial, and temporal division of labor is subject to change as well.  This seminar will explore how different meanings of "work" are constructed along with different forms of information technology in particular times and places, for particular subsets of the labor force, by particular historical actors.  Along the way we will encounter theory and methods from the history of technology, the anthropology of work, and the human geography of built environments. 

Assignments and grading

Attendance and participation are crucial.  Class will meet for one session each week, involving both lecture and discussion.  Students are expected not only to attend class but also to participate in class discussion.  While a small number of class absences are inevitable, you can't get a top grade in this class if you don't attend and speak up regularly.

We do lots and lots of reading in this course.  Enough said.

You will have regular homework and writing assignments.  Sometimes this assignment will be an essay question based on the week's reading; sometimes it will be a "fieldwork" assignment to seek out some information on the Web or write about a class experiment.  The length of these assignments will vary but they are all important and students are expected to take them seriously.

NB: Several times during the semester we will hold student-led discussion of the readings.  We will divide up these tasks at the first class meeting, with a different group of students assigned to each of the discussions. 

There will be no final research or review project. This semester we will conduct the class as a "reading seminar" meaning that we will not demand a final research paper. However, if you are interested in writing a final paper for another purpose — say, a graduate field proficency or as part of a thesis/dissertation project — the instructor will be happy to work with you on this.

Grading breakdown.  Students will be graded on overall class participation including attendance, tardiness, and contribution to discussion (50%) and on their written homework assignments including leading a discussion section (50%).

Texts to purchase

University Bookstore

Underground Textbook Exchange

I understand that textbooks are expensive, but they are still important to serious study, even of "new media" topics. My policy is to pick class texts that are recent, readable, and useful to students even after class is over.  These texts will be worth your money to buy, and worth your time to read.  

Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (originally published 1973; 1999 edition). "Published originally in 1973, Daniel Bell's The Coming of Post-Industrial Society was the first book to identify the structural changes in American society leading to the Information Age.. "Decades later, the term, the idea and the concept of the post-industrial society have assimilated into common usage, employed by the Unabomber, Margaret Thatcher and President Clinton. Yet the concept and its ramifications have often been misunderstood and in this anniversary re-issue of the original book, Professor Bell has added a new 30,000-word Foreword exploring the future developments of post-industrial society."  — from the publisher

Aad Blok and Greg Downey, eds., Uncovering Labour in Information Revolutions, 1750-2000 [International Review of Social History supplement 11] (Cambridge University Press, 2004). "Most discussions of the present-day Information Revolution are focused on the technological developments in the realm of information and communication, and tend to overlook both the human labour involved in the development, maintenance and daily use of these information and communication technologies (ICTs), and the consequences of the implementation of these ICTs for the position and divisions of labour.  This volume aims to redress this imbalance by exploring the role, position and divisions of information and communication labour in the broadest sense through periods of revolutionary technological change. With contributions on a variety of geographies in this latest as well as in earlier information ages, this collection offers a comparative insight into the continuities and discontinuities in information revolutions."

Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class ... and how it’s transforming work, leisure, community, and everyday life (2002). "
" Millions of Americans are beginning to work and live the way creative people like artists and scientists always have - and as a result our values and tastes, our personal relationships, our choices of where to live, and even our sense and use of time, are changing. Leading the shift are the nearly 38 million Americans in many diverse fields who create for a living - the Creative Class. The first person to name this revolution was renowned urban studies theorist Richard Florida." In The Rise of the Creative Class, Florida chronicles the ongoing sea change in people's choices and attitudes and describes a society in which the creative ethos in increasingly dominant. With updated city rankings and a new preface, this is the national bestseller that swept the country and showed how the very future of our cities depends on a new economic class. " — from the publisher

R. Emmett Murray, Lexicon of Labor: More than 500 Key Terms, Biographical Sketches, and Historical Insights Concerning Labor in America (1998). "The Lexicon of Labor features informative descriptions of over 500 key places, people, and events in American labor history. From Eugene Debs to Cesar Chavez, the Haymarket Riots in 1886 to the Teamsters/UPS strike in 1997. Emmett Murray provides brief, fascinating sketches of this vital part of the American experience. The Lexicon of Labor also includes explanations of major legislative acts, definitions of key legal terminology, and complete listings of all the member unions of the AFL-CIO and independent unions in the United States. A practical, handy resource for students and journalists, and an ideal introduction to the history of labor in America. " —from the publisher

Julian E. Orr, Talking About Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job (1996). "This is a story of how work gets done. It is also a study of how field service technicians talk about their work and how that talk is instrumental in their success. In his innovative ethnography, Julian E. Orr studies the people who repair photocopiers and shares vignettes from their daily lives. He characterizes their work as a continuous highly skilled improvisation within a triangular relationship of technician, customer, and machine" — from the publisher

Karen Riggs, Granny at Work: Aging and New Technology on the Job in America (2003). "The Advancing Age of Baby Boomers, who are living longer and retiring later, has generated an unprecedented number of older workers in America. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the population of workers 55 and over will practically double from 18 million in 2000 to more than 33 million by 2025. In Granny @ Work, Karen Riggs -- a renowned expert on aging -- examines how this older workforce is coping with radical technological changes being introduced to the workplace -- from e-mail to automation. Drawing on extensive interviews, she brings to light what employers, software engineers, and public policy makers seem to be thinking behind the scenes about the roles older adults might play in the workplace of the future -- and asks whether those on the front lines of corporate life are actually looking out for the interests of a graying workforce. Riggs also challenges dominant beliefs about aging and technology as they are disseminated in popular culture, offering incisive analysis of a wide range of material from films focused on older characters such as Cocoon and Space Cowboys to specialty websites and magazines aimed at older workers. Granny @ Work is an impassioned comment on aging, work, and technology in American culture. As Riggs challenges popular assumptions with surprising research -- for example, people over the age of 60 spend more time on the Internet than people of any other age group -- and trenchant cultural critique, she also forces us to confront the deeply entrenched ageism in today's technology-driven workplace." — from the publisher

Jackie Krasas Rogers, Temps: The many faces of the changing workplace (2000). "Now firmly established as fixtures of the American workplace, temporary employees constitute a much-discussed but still poorly understood segment of the labor force. In this consciousness-raising book, Jackie Krasas Rogers explores the realities of temporary work from the points of view of workers, agencies, and clients, focusing especially on issues of race, gender, power, and identity.
Rogers investigates the situations of two very different kinds of temporary worker--lawyers and those in clerical settings--and finds contrasts and similarities between the two groups' reasons for seeking temporary work, the type of tasks performed, and the value attached to that labor.
The goals of temporary workers can be at odds with the interests of the agency and the client, the other players in the power triad of "temping." Where clerical workers often see temporary employment as a stepping stone to a permanent job, many find upward mobility more illusory than real. Because temporary workers can be called in and let go at will or whim, and they have no established social relations in the workplace, they often work harder than permanent workers.
Rogers, one of the authoritative scholars of temporary work in the United States, uses extensive archival and field data--including notes from her own work as an office temporary--to put a face on America's temporary workforce. "  — from the publisher

Andrew Ross, No-collar: The humane workplace and its hidden costs (2003). "An academic iconoclast explores the new "no-collar" workplace—the most recent and radical step in our quest to create the perfect job—and finds important lessons about the future of work in an uncertain economy.
No-Collar is the first book to place the much-feted New Economy workplace in the context of industrial history and the struggle to win a humane work environment. From Horatio Alger to the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Americans have extolled the virtues of hard work as a source of meaning and identity as well as livelihood. Drawing on his yearlong study of two Silicon Alley companies, as well as on interviews with a range of employees in other Internet industries, Andrew Ross offers a dramatic report on how the self-directed "no-collar" life stacks up against earlier work utopias.
Though urban knowledge workers enjoyed unprecedented autonomy and bargaining power, and their bohemian artisan style evoked a pre-industrial craft ethos, the volatile economy exposed even the rank-and-file to 24/7 schedules, emotional churning, and the kinds of pressure typically borne only by senior managers. With his characteristic mix of laser-sharp analysis and deft storytelling, Ross asks: How humane can, or should, a workplace be? In documenting the quixotic life of these neo-bohemian workplaces, No-Collar records a unique moment in American history and reveals what the landscape of work will look like for decades to come." — from the publisher

Certain optional readings will be noted in the week-by-week syllabus on the right.  You may also download a list of various other readings on the class topic to help you generate project ideas.

Films to watch

Optional films COMING SOON

Films are an important educational resource and should be treated with the same seriousness as lectures and texts, meaning:

• Students need to attend in-class film screenings
• Students should take notes on the films

You may (and should) use concepts, evidence, and arguments from the films in your written assignments

Crossing the divide: Creating a high-tech work force. (2000). 57 min.  "All over America, schools are scrambling for computers and Internet access. But have the huge expenditures really produced a tangible return on investment? In this program, teachers, administrators, and other education professionals share their experiences and opinions regarding the potential and the pitfalls of education technology. They address the proper use of computers, the integration of the Internet into lessons, and the urgent need for teacher training, long-term planning, and ongoing infrastructure funding. They also question the deeper cost of school budgets skewed toward technology at the expense of the arts and humanities." — PBS

Secrets of Silicon Valley (2001). 60 min.  "[A] shocking exposé of the hidden downsides of the Internet revolution and also a funny and moving meditation on America's love affair with technology. Told without narration, the film chronicles a tumultuous year in the lives of two young activists grappling with rapid social change and the meaning of globalization on their own doorsteps." — from the distributor

Students with special needs

McBurney Center

Persons with disabilities are to be fully included in this course. Please let me know if you need any special accommodations to enable you to fully participate. I will try to maintain confidentiality of the information you share with me. To request academic accomodations, please register with the McBurney Disability Resource Center.

Academic honesty

Misconduct Guide

Academic honesty requires that the course work (drafts, reports, examinations, papers) a student presents to an instructor honestly and accurately indicates the student's own academic efforts. If you are unsure about what qualifies as academic dishonesty, please consult the Academic Misconduct Guide for Students.  Two points in particular to keep in mind:

• copying or paraphrasing material from web pages without proper quotation and citation is plagiarism
  
• copying or paraphrasing material from fellow students is plagiarism

Please remember that any plagiarism may be sufficient grounds for failing a student in the entire course.

About the instructor

Greg Downey <gdowney @ wisc.edu> is an assistant professor with a 50 percent appointment in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and a 50 percent appointment in the School of Library and Information Studies.  His teaching and research both center on the history and geography of information and communication technology and labor.

Downey joined the UW faculty in 2001. He holds a B.S. and M.S. in computer science from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, an M.A. In liberal studies from Northwestern University, and a joint Ph.D. in history of technology and human geography from the Johns Hopkins University. Before coming to Madison, Downey spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Geography and the Humanities Institute at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

His industry experience as a computer analyst includes three years at the Leo Burnett advertising agency in Chicago, and three years at Roger Schank’s Institute for Learning Sciences at Northwestern University. He has held short-term volunteer positions with both the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago and the Community Information Exchange in Washington D.C.

Downey’s dissertation research followed the story of a particular category of information workers, telegraph messenger boys, through a century of changes in the U.S. telegraph network from 1850 to 1950. His first book, Telegraph Messenger Boys: Labor, Technology, and Geography, 1850-1950, was published by Routledge in 2002.

He is currently working on a history and geography of audio/visual text captioning labor and technology worldwide over the 20th century.

Just for fun

Fall 2004 syllabus