We are a number of university students from various departments of Syracuse University, who gathered together in an advanced Writing Studio to discuss and critique the discourse of the Internet, and to participate in its conversation. As a group we are fairly multi-cultural, and we represent a fairly broad spectrum of opinions and backgrounds--characteristics that we hope are represented in our papers, which you will find collected in this web-site.
These papers are the outcome of a semester-long process of feverish activity. We started off by familiarizing ourselves with the Internet by conducting individual searches, and by writing preliminary reaction papers to whatever caught our interest. Amongst us some decided to write two short papers, while others, the majority, exhausted our energies on a single paper. The bulk the semester was devoted in researching and drafting our main papers, which were discussed and workshopped in a classroom setting. The final step was putting our documents into HTML and publishing them on the Web.
The purpose of this entire operation was first to familiarize ourselves with the medium of the Internet, and to learn to publish on it. The goal of the course was to improve our writing skills by engaging in the production of texts in a context more meaningful than that of the average writing course, in which texts are produced for internal consumption. Our overall purpose, however, as a group was to develop and communicate our positions in issues that affect our society, and which interested us personally.
On this web-site you will find discussions of a range of topics that emerge in a new light and with renewed vivacity on the Internet: Discussions of racism, the anti-immigration movement, the legalization of cannabis, child-abuse, Internet addiction and intellectual property on the Internet are only some of the topics you will find on this web-site We hope you will find the issues as stimulating as we did.