Adam Greenfield and Mark Shepard, Urban Computing and its Discontents (pdf)
Discourse Communities
– vocabularies/concepts/conventions specific to a given community
– membership
– not just communication but also indicating a sense of belonging
– we are all members of multiple discourse communities
ex. Architectural discourse community: “construction documents,” “truss,” “poché,” “entourage”
– writing for a popular audience vs. writing for an academic community — compare Clive Thompson’s “Location Location Location” to “Urban Computing and Its Discontents”
academic discourse: symposium, taxonomy
GROUP PROJECT
– Discuss the discourse community of “Urban Computing and Its Discontents”
– Who wrote this? (more than their names: where do they work? what kind of work do they do?)
– how would you describe this discourse community?
– what are some key terms and concepts that define urban computing as discussed in this essay?
– Each group should identify 5 terms used in the essay that express important concepts related to urban ubiquitous computing
– Each person in the group should take one of those terms and write at least a paragraph that quotes from the book and discusses the way in which that term is used.
Group 1
Maritza
Michael
George
Chris
Group 2
Anthony
Luis
Jair
Eric
Group 3
Demir
Eric
Theo
Group 4
Jiayi
Alan
Joaquin
David Castro
Group 5
Erika
Sandy
Victor
Magda
McLuhan — “Every extension is also an amputation.”
– become more dependent on technology, less dependent on native senses
– blind man/cane
– surveillance
