Reading List
August 31. Social reality
Borges, The Lottery in Babylon
Shakespeare, Hamlet
Optional
Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum
The Matrix
September 7. Technological change
Kurzweil
Joy, Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us
September 14. Early history
Dibbell, A Rape in Cyberspace
Bartle, chapter 1, pp 1-32
Optional
Dibbell, My Tiny Life
September 21. Current state
Castronova, Chapter 3
Bartle, chapter 1, pp 32-80
September 28. Design features I, the front
Bartle, chapters 4 and 5
October 5. Design features II, the back end
Castronova, chapter 4
Bartle, chapter 2
October 12. Effects on the user.
Yee, The Daedalus Project
Bartle, chapter 3
Book, Traveling Through Cyberspace
Optional
Gerard Jones, Killing Monsters
Submit a one-paragraph description of your paper topic.
October 19. Sociology and Community
Jakobsson and Taylor, The Sopranos Meet EverQuest
Castronova, The Price of ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’
Koster, The Laws of Online World Design
October 26. Learning in virtual environments.
IU Center for Research on Learning and Technology, Quest Atlantis
Steinkuehler, Learning in Massively Multiplayer Games
November 2. Economic systems and commodification
Castronova, Virtual Worlds
Dibbell, The Unreal Estate Boom
November 9. Legal implications
Hunter and Lastowka, The Laws of the Virtual Worlds
Bartle, Pitfalls of Virtual Property
Balkin, Virtual Liberty
November 16. Long-run implications
Castronova, On Virtual Economies
Jenkins, The Virtual World as a Company Town
Ondrejka, Living on the Edge
Reynolds, Playing a “Good” Game
Ward, The Dark Side of Digital Utopia