Philosophy, Information, and Media: A Course Packet

Today we are living through one of human history’s great media shifts, on par with the invention of the written language and the printing press. A shift of this magnitude invites philosophical reflection: both historical and phenomenological reflections on the nature of information and a general examination of the way media affects consciousness.

In this course, we will consider the history of media shifts and their impact by looking at thinkers as diverse as Plato and Marshall McLuhan, Immanuel Kant and Ted Nelson. After first tracing the history of the “informational turn”, we will then look at the impact of media shifts on the way we think about texts, and the nature of reading and writing. Finally we will look at the social implications of these shifts, considering especially the values of a deliberative democracy and how digital media positively or negatively affect our pursuit of those values.