HON 296-01 Interpretive Machines

This course invites first-year students into a historically ranging, critically intensive, and hands-on learning environment about the technologies by which humans transmit our cultural inheritance and ideas. “Interpretive Machines” takes a long view of how we got to now, from the history of manuscripts, books, and print media to the opportunities for innovation in the digital present. It argues that 1) then and now, our technologies for sharing text, image, and data crucially shape the ideas which they convey, and 2) these contexts can help students plan and execute new mechanisms for communication in the present. The course’s modules offer critical frameworks of background readings and discussions, a lab-like experience with the materials or skills involved, and applied projects for students to experiment with and study. “Interpretive Machines” aims to reward students moving into a variety of disciplines and programs. The course seeks to marry the critical insights of the humanities with the design-and-build impulses of engineering, blending NC State’s “Think and Do” motto into a discovery experience for first-year students. The course also provides a framework for critical and creative thinking as part of NC State University’s QEP program called “TH!NK.” These standards and behaviors of critical + creative thinking, useful in every academic context, are built into the course’s program of activities, many of which are also designed to help you reflect on these very skills (i.e. metacognition). Students will become adept at using the intellectual standards for critical + creative thinking in evaluating the work of others as well as proposing, analyzing, and arguing research questions related to this course’s content.