In this paper, we read college course syllabi as material objects that shed light on larger issues, specifically conflict between faculty and students. We explore the commodification of college labor' where degreed labor and credit hours are produced. Under these conditions, the syllabus becomes a labor contract detailing faculty expectations of students. Rather than merely introducing the course subject matter or providing only basic information, the syllabus increasingly spells out the precise conditions under which student work will be evaluated and credit hours awarded, and the behavioral and attitudinal expectations of students. By observing how power is transacted through the syllabus, we better understand the role that faculty/student relations play in further undermining academic community.

Parents complain that kids today don t do their homework because they are distracted by the Internet, texting, and video games. Many kids experience schooling as nothing more than endless homework, distracted teachers, and helicopter parents. It is easy to conclude from these factors that young people lack cultural literacy. By presenting the writings of today s kids, however, Agger develops an alternative perspective: This is the most literary of times, and the young people of today write furiously, albeit often below the adult radar. Here, where texting replaces textbooks, the writing may be emoticon-laden, slangy, or terse, but there is something profound going on, as kids (and their parents, too) engage in resistance and write toward utopia a better world. Much texting and tweeting occur at night, when kids form egalitarian online and offline relationships and operate in a world in which a person can have many friends and explore opportunities previously unavailable to them. This book is a guide to understanding a new generation and its ideals, including democracy.

Thomas Piketty’s critique of capitalism, Capital in the 21st Century (2014), is examined in light of earlier Marxist and neo-Marxist analyses. It is noted that Piketty’s important main finding, that inequality has increased under capitalism, is not matched by his solution, the ‘social state’, which hinges on a tax on capital and is not a fundamental rethinking of capitalism. Alternative analyses of a global ‘flash capitalism’ are explored.

This paper is a reflection on the publication practice of the journal Fast Capitalism, an open-source, electronic journal founded by Ben Agger and Timothy Luke in 2005. It also presents thoughts on writing, reading and publishing in postmodern capitalism.

People overshare when they interact with others through the screens of computers and smartphones. Oversharing means to divulge more of their inner feelings, opinions and sexuality than they would in person, or even over the phone. Text messaging, Facebooking, tweeting, camming, blogging, online dating, and internet porn are vehicles of this oversharing, which blurs the boundary between public and private life. This book examines these presentations of self, acknowledging that we are now much more public about what used to be private. The book concludes with reflections on the impact of oversharing on identity, friendship, sexuality, family and democracy, and suggests steps people can take to re-establish the boundary between public and personal life.

The smartphone changes everything, or so it seems. iPhones create iTime and fundamentally alter the boundaries between public and private and day and night. We are now online anytime/anywhere, requiring new theoretical understandings of time and place. This starts with the young, who are inseparable from their phones, and has now spread to their parents. Smartphones use us, bending us to their compulsive rhythms and demanding our attention. In a good society, we would be the masters of technology, retaining the connectivity and global reach of our smartphones, but not enslaved to them as many of us are today. As the example of the smartphone demonstrates, the internet requires new social and cultural theory in order to address its transforming potential.