Third Assignment

Choose one of the options below and write an essay in response. Your essay should be at least three and a half pages in length and should not exceed six pages. Use double-space lineation, a 12-point serif font, and one-inch margins on all sides. Your writing is expected to be error-free and up to university standards.

All essays for this assignment may either be argumentative essays (with a thesis statement) or research reports (with results, analysis of results, and conclusions).

As always, carefully document all your sources of information (whether directly quoted or not).

The assignment is due on March 1st, but may be handed in up to one week late without penalty. Consult the course outline for further information about late assignments.

Option 1: Visualization

Use the Mandala Browser (mandala.humviz.org) to examine one or two large texts. I recommend you use the XML versions of Anne of Green Gables (here) and/or Emma (here) available on the course web site, though you can use something else if you prefer. The Mandala Browser is a text analysis tool with a mostly visual interface: it represents visually the relationship between items in a text. Write an essay that reports on what you have found and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using this visualization technique.

Option 2A: Social profiling

Write a detailed response to The Numerati. In particular, examine the human implications of two or more of the types of profiling discussed in the book. What might the author be ignoring, especially when considering how social profiling might alter the definition of what it means to be a human and/or change society radically?

Option 2B: Social profiling

Write an essay that examines the uses, implications, and potential problems with one type of digital social profiling. You may focus on one set of data (such as credit card records, emails, Twitter tweets, etc.) or on one goal (such as marketing, health care profiling, dating, etc.) that potentially uses more than one set of data. You are welcome to draw upon what is presented in The Numerati, but you should ideally extend what is said, particularly by researching further profiling techniques or goals.

Option 3: Gaming

Write an analysis of a computer game. Note that you are analyzing the game from the perspective of humanistic enquiry (not from a psychological, marketing, computer/graphic design, or sociological perspective). I recommend you follow the guidelines presented in class, though you are certainly free to deviate from these if you feel you can produce a better essay by doing so. You may choose any computer game (though you should probably choose wisely). Unless I am very familiar with the game, you must include with your essay a one- to two-page appendix (that does not count towards the page count of the essay) that briefly summarizes the game: its goals, method of play, and anything else you think needs to be said as background. The essay itself must focus on analysis.