This course will introduce students to the transformation of the World Wide Web from an information space to one that is increasingly seen as a series of dynamic knowledge sites. These new types of sites, typically database driven (whether through a custom-designed database or software like WordPress) take advantage of the affordances of Web 2.0, including more dynamic multimodality, interactivity (with greater amounts of user-generated content), and enhanced usability. These changes in how content is generated, shared, and delivered raise new issues, including the ethics and challenges of creating, curating, and preserving digital content.
This course will explore how this new approach to generating web content changes user expectations and forms of practice; how it has introduced a new dialogue between the textual and the contextual and between words and image. As the internet becomes the de facto space for information, and increasingly a place to create, share, and remix (participation culture) both our and found objects, we will explore notions such as value, memory, power, and representation in the digital transformation in terms of who controls the narrative.
Maastricht University, Machines of Knowledge course description
