To fully appreciate our dual position in electronic culture, we need to understand relationships
between artforms, technologies, and politics. Which leads us to this assignment. It asks you to
tell the story of a technological development or discovery that made mass-media arts possible.
In the title of your paper, indicate the following:
1. The technology about which you are writing.
2. The audience to whom you are writing.
3. The medium though which your story will travel (or into which it will be encoded).
For example, your title might go something like this: "The Story of the Cathode-Ray Tube: A Radio Drama for Children").
Gather data for your narrative as you would gather material for any research paper. Consult at
least five sources (not counting course texts and reading materials). But view your data as a
journalist would. Look for the story it tells--the drama behind the facts. Finally, write this story
as a television show or as screen play, as a drama for radio or sound recording (phonograph
record or compact disc). Additionally, your narrative should include photocopied graphics and
sound bites or, more precisely, your text should include directions for interpellating graphic and
audio information. The goal here is to create a document on disk and on paper--a kind of
blueprint--that could be easily converted into hypertext and posted on the W3.
Throughout your paper, as you rely on the work of others, you should make attributions. For instructions on this topic, click here.