Assignments

Paper One
Michael Pollan, in "Playing God in the Garden," and Philip Angell, in Monsanto's response, both make very convincing arguments about the need for and the risks of biotechnology. Indeed, given that both authors have valid points, it's difficult to make a decision about biotechnology. That's a problem.

Pollan's and Angell's arguments are made in terms of knowledge--both in what we know and what we don't know. Yet, on some level, what counts as knowledge seems to be different for each author. Perhaps one way to resolve the problem of making a decision on biotechnology is first to decide on a standard for knowledge.

Using both of these texts, propose a standard of knowledge we can use to determine how to act in relation to biotechnology and then test that standard by evaluating the essays we've read. Three page rough draft due Thursday, 1/31. Four to five page final draft due Thursday, 2/7.

I'll have more tips and tricks about 101 papers in Tuesday's class.

Paper Two
For your second paper, write an essay in which you take a position on the responsibility of knowledge for its economic and social effects.

Pollan says a lot about Monsanto not simply as a large agribusiness, but moreover as a information corporation. Drucker makes it clear that knowledge and knowledge workers are now a central economic component, but that they also have severe social impacts that may or may not be solved by the social sector. In forming your project, you may want to use Pollan's concerns to critique what Drucker has to say about the knowledge society and how it functions. Or, you may want to use Drucker's call for the social sector to address the problems with biotech that Pollan sees.

As part of "flex time," I also invite other projects that are centrally concerned with the relationship between Drucker and Pollan. Therefore, don't feel "penned in" by the question of the responsibility of knowledge. At the same time, understand that it's riskier to form an original project on your own at this point in the semester.

In all cases, you will want to stake out your position using both Drucker and Pollan, as well as any other sources you want to bring into this conversation, such as Angell. Three page rough draft due around 2/14. Five page final drfat due around 2/21.

If you have questions about the assignment, let me know.

Paper Three
In today's "Information Age." questions of ownership of intellectual property of all kind is a central concern, one that was recently highlighted, for example, by the controversy surrounding Napster. Who owns knowledge, if knowledge can be owned (think here of the motto of the internet, "Information just wants to be free"), and the economic and social consequences of owning knowledge are all questions we as a society must neogiate.

For your third paper, stake out a position on the ownership of knowledge using Drucker, Pollan, and Blackmore (and, optionally, Angell).

The question is broad and open-ended, and on purpose. I want to give you the freedom to pursue projects that speak (on some level) to your own interests and stakes in the issue. But let me give you some warnings here. You should NOT simply write a paper that directly confronts Blackmore by saying "we own knowledge" or "knowledge owns us." That would be a passing paper, but a weak one. Instead, I want you to imagine knowledge and information as a general context for all these essays, and then formulate a project out of that. You may want to think about the social impact of owning knowledge, or the economic impact. You may want to consider if knowledge can be owned at all. You may want to think about what kind of knowledge can be owned, how ownership manifests in different ways (personal versus legal, for example). These are all ideas meant to help you start thinking about this paper. Moreover, realize that these essays give you a number of tools you can use in this assignment. For example, Pollan's central concern, one could say, is Monsanto's proprietary ownership of knowledge in the New Leafs, as well as the problems of what we don't yet know about biotech. Drucker, to be sure, seems to argue that the knowledge society functions from a base of knowledge workers owning knowledge. Blackmore, of course, argues implicitly against all of this, but the concept of "meme" is also useful for exploring how something like biotech or the knowledge society emerges and spreads. Hope this gives you some leg up on the assignment.

Drafts should be 4 pages. Final papers should be 5-6 pages.

Paper Four
In many ways, "Why do things fall apart?" is the central question of "Selections from To Engineer Is Human." As Henry Petroski pursues an answer to this question, he presents a number of concepts-such as fatigue, engineering lifetimes, and failure-that tell us something about the process of creation, or, more generally, the process of making. At the same time, as the title of his book suggests, these are not answers for engineering only. If, indeed, to engineer is human, than these concepts may have larger implications. Each of the authors we have looked at previously is involved, in some form, with making as well: making new potatoes, making a decision about whether or not to eat them, making a new society or making new means to solve that society's problems, making a new concept of cultural evolution, one which itself explains how cultures make themselves.

Write an essay, then, in which you take a position on the costs or benefits of failure and its relation to the processes of making, growth, and/or the evolution of cultures, products, or ideas.

One quick tip: a strong project here would not simply say "failure is good" or "failure is bad." Think of Petroski's own essay in this respect: failure is a complicated process with risks, costs, and benefits. Your job in this paper is to stake out a similarly nuanced and complicated position and then to support that position with Petroski and one of the other essays.

Rough drafts should be a minimum of five pages. Final drafts must be a minimum of six pages.

Paper Five
Though concerned with the pollution of the Ganges in India, Alexander Stille's "The Ganges' Next Life" speaks to many important issues in our world today. For your fifth paper, I want you to consider the role of politics, spirituality, and technology.

Write an essay in which you explore the relationship between politics, spirituality, and technology, either as it is or as it should be.

Papers should use Stille and one of the other essays we have read this semester. Let me give you a start on this assignment: Is spirituality a necessary component of change, one that Petroski fails to account for? Or is there a sense of the spiritual in his description of engineering? How does the movement to clean the Ganges reflect Petroski's ideas while also expanding or complicating them? Are these three areas competing memes? Or does the situation Stille describes suggest a more complicated sense of how cultures evolve and reproduce? Is India a knowledge society? If so, can Drucker's insights about the functioning of the knowledge society help account for the situation in India? One of Monsanto's justifications for the New Leaf is that it will help feed a growing world population. Given the situation in India, is this a wise and responsible thing to do; in other words, should technology promote the growth of population? In making decisions what role should politics, technology, and spirituality play?

In general, you want to locate a project that uses Stille and the other essay to speak not simply about these texts (Blac more is wrong--Stille proves it; Drucker is right--Stille proves it) but that move us to a new understanding of the larger issues. Imagine the texts we have read are part of a larger conversation about politics, spirituality, and technology. What do they say and how can you add to that conversation?

Rough drafts should be a minimum of five pages. Final drafts must be a minimum of six pages.

Paper Six
According to Abram, indigenous shamans mediate between the human community and the other-than-human intelligences that make up the larger ecological field by keeping this relationship in balance. Abram goes on to lament Western culture's loss of this balance, finding no true shamanic figures in the West. And yet many of the essays we've read this semester have implicitly or explicitly similar concerns about human society, the larger ecology, and balance. For your last paper, write an essay on shamanism in the West.

Your paper must use Abram and two of the other essays we have read this semester (any two). You have many options in approaching this assignment: you might think about whether or not we have seen shamanic figures in the previous essays; you might want to write about why we don't have a concept (meme) like shamanism in the West; you might want to propose shamanic ideas as solutions to problems in other essays; and so on...

Rough drafts should be a minimum of five pages. Final drafts must be a minimum of six pages.