ENGL 3036: Digital Anxieties: September - December 2011
Home Information Schedule Evaluation Assignments Contact Links

Important terms

These are lists of important terms from each of our books. You will be tested on your understanding of what the terms mean (in the context of the books) and how the concepts suggested by the terms are being used within the authors’ arguments. In general, the page numbers below refer to the main places where the authors discuss or define the terms; there may certainly be other places in the books where the terms are important.

The Dumbest Generation
The betrayal of the mentors
Bibliophobia
Culture war (page 218)
The dumbest generation (page 26 and elsewhere)
The Flynn Effect (page 91)
Knowledge deficit
The Matthew Effect (page 59)
Techno-cheerleaders (page 125)

You Are Not a Gadget
Computationalism (page 153)
Cybernetic totalism / digital Maoism (page 16)
Design lock-in (page 7)
Digital humanism (pages 23, 178, and elsewhere)
Drive-by anonymity (page 63)
New digital economy (pages 100-01)
Metaness (page 28)
Moore’s Law (page 8)
Neoteny (page 179)
Noosphere / hive mind (pages 48-50)
Postsymbolic communication (page 190)
Second-order expression (pages 121-22 and elsewhere)
The Singularity (pages 24-25)

The Shallows
cognitive load (pages 125-29 and elsewhere)
ELIZA (pages 202-05)
hypertext links (hyperlinks)
neuroplasticity
scriptura continua (page 61 and elsewhere)
Taylorism (pages 149-50 and following)

Alone Together
adolescent moratorium
alive enough
cell phone narcissism
ELIZA
the robotic moment
the romantic reaction to robots
Rorschach
sociable robots

Reality is Broken
alternate reality games (page 125)
collaboration (page 268)
engagement economy (page 227)
fiero (page 33)
flow (page 35)
four defining traits of a game (page 21)
happiness hacking (page 188)
prosocial emotions (page 82)
rewards: intrinsic and extrinsic (esp. pages 46 and 49)
satisfying work (pages 55-56)
social participation tasks (page 253)
unnecessary obstacles (page 22)

Infinite Reality
avatar (page 60)
grounded reality (esp. pages 15-16)
haptic devices (esp. pages 237-38)
inattentional blindness (page 12)
the Proteus Effect (page 102)
rendering (page 44)
teledildonics (page 189)
tracking (page 42)



Marc R. Plamondon, Ph.D. Department of English Studies Nipissing University