HIST1900a Fall 2025 Presentation Library
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Module 1: Our Present Enshittified Moment
Sept 3. Welcome & Getting Started
What this is all about.
Sept 8. The Web Makes Me Miserable
The current state of things.
Sept 10. Enshittification
A new word for an old thing.
Sept 15. Web 2.0: The Golden Age?
New ways of interacting on the web require new techs.
Sept 17. First Précis/Research Memo
Here's what we'll do.
Sept 22. Dot Com Goes Boom.
Irrational Exuberance.
Sept 24. Web 1.0, GeoCities, and Browser Wars.
How To Be Web.
Feedback Re the First Précis & Memo
Part of a Longer History.
Module 2: The Internet Before the Web
Oct 1. Hypertext.
Another Long History.
Oct 6. BBS.
An internet without the internet.
Oct 8. Games & Learning to Be Online (also, MUDs).
What teaches us to be online? Games.
Oct 15. The ARPANet Gets Created.
It ain't about the nukes.
Oct 27. The second research note exercise.
Two readings: two separate precis/memo combos.
Oct 29. Other Internets.
Or what could have been, comrade.
Module 3: The Dawn of the Information Age
Nov 3. Information Theory.
Of telephones & business shennannigans.
Nov 5. Codes & Cyphers.
How
do
you represent information, anyway?.
Nov 10. Calculators but not Quite Computers.
The Birth of IBM
Nov 12. The Invention of the Computer.
Colosus, ENIGMA, Bletchley Park...
Nov 19. Third Precis/Memo Exercise.
The more you do these, the faster & better you get.
Module 4: The Grab Bag
Nov 24. Grab Bag One of Interesting Bits that Connect Things Together.
On weaving, making wires, and ethernetting.
Nov 26. Grab Bag Two of Interesting Bits that Connect Things Together.
On Historying and Theory and Lenses and Frames.
Dec 1. The Great Internet History Bracket.
A Tournament.
Dec 3. From Notes to Writing .
I keep calling the precis/memos a tool. Here's why.
Dec 5. The Final Question .
Come to class, learn, hang around for help.