Mid-Term Topics

Criteria are in the assignment post.

1. Select an on-line work of fanfiction and discuss it in light of chapter seven--on the role of art as prophet and buffer--from Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media.
2. In Snow Crash, the Librarian is a medium and its content is Sumerian myth. According to Marshall McLuhan, this relationship would transform the myth into art. As an art form, the myth surrenders its truth aspect and becomes æsthetic only. Explain whether or not McLuhan argument here is that (a.) computer technology is a hot medium which (b.) in this case diminishes the human benefits of myth.
3. Do you agree with McLuhan that the content of a printed work of fiction is irrelevant to its social message? Your argument must (a.) focus on any one of the three works of printed fiction in our course, and (b.) use any one aspect of the internet (e.g. IM, e-mail, YouTube, etc.) as a comparison.