Hotel Microsoft

= Or, The Penguin Has Landed = Term: Winter 1999
Your host: Dennis Redmond
Registration info: Colt 204 CRN 22154 4 credits
Class meetings: 11-11:50 MWF in 248 Gerlinger
My office hours: MW 1-2 pm (if I'm not there, you can also leave a message at 346-0522, or at my home phone at 683-9303)

Description: Two words define the culture of global information capitalism nowadays: Microsoft and cyberspace. Amazingly, both were invented not by a certain Seattle firm or its notorious founder, but by quite another college dropout named Bill -- a certain William Gibson, author of the classic sci-fi tale Neuromancer, who was and is about as far from being one of the Silicon industriocrats, mighty Eurobankers, speculation-happy mutual fund managers and gargantuan multinational corporations who actually run the world economy as you can get. In fact, the world of computers, software and what we'll call the e-culture (the submarine fusion of entertainment and electronics) has a long and glorious tradition of subversion, dissent and resistance to Business as Usual, and forms one of the central wellsprings of late 20th century culture. We're going to read and view some of the most thought-provoking texts, films, TV series and other accounts of the info-culture dating from the Sixties to the present, while mapping out the trajectory of the Information Age from its genesis in the primeval swamps of secret Pentagon research labs to its mid-Seventies viral mutation into video, all the way to its all-too-temporary stay in the corridors of Hotel Microsoft.

What You Need to Do: Show up, of course. Most of your grade will depend upon class participation, some short essays, and a final project of some sort (either a final paper of 10 pages or so, or a final oral presentation, whichever you prefer).

Texts You'll Need to Buy: There are only three for this class, and they're all inexpensive paperbacks: William Gibson's epochal Neuromancer, Thomas Pynchon's hilarious The Crying of Lot 49, and Hunter Thompson's glorious Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Useful Links: SAP Yea verily, for the Intranet Gods hath spoken, and the Word is SAP.
Linux Weekly News Good source of info on the Penguin insurrection.
Electronic Engineering Times Good news roundup on the hardware biz.
Semiconductor Business News Excellent, comprehensive roundup of the semi biz.
Planet Quake Not for the faint of heart or the delayed of ping. The Dear Mynx column is a scream.
PlanetHardware Shop your graphics cards here.
Organizing Big Blue Techies talk union. Today IBM, tomorrow Dell!
Washtech Temp techs organize. Scored some victories against Billon Dollar Bill.
Gaming News From PC to console.
PS2 Toshiba tech, Sony style, Q3-style polys.
NNN The Gamecube powers up with Matsushita microbionics.
The Reg Smart, sassy tech coverage.
Quake 3 To paraphrase Dr. Octagon, Quake moves on to the Year 3000.
Serious Sam The Euroaesthetic express roars out of Zagreb. Possibly the best pure shooter since Doom; the 3dfps moves on to the year 4000.
Max Payne Stupendous action thriller, a revolution in the 3rd person shooter. Bullseye!
Planet Halflife Subquantum organisms can get their radium supplements here.
Halflife Maps For your downloading pleasure.
Black Widow Games Neil Manke's site. The greatest mapper on the 3D scene today. Dazzling!
Hangar 16 Single-player HL splendiferousness.
Penguin Madness But not without method.
Free Your OS Your desktop will follow. And laptop. And palmtop...
NVidia OpenGL is a beautiful thing.
OpenGL Setup 800 x 600 OpenGL, that is.
Radeon 1024x768x32 is Boolean for paradise.
Game Studies The first-ever international journal dedicated to videogames.
Game Culture Website devoted to global gaming culture.

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