Broader Issues in Computer Science

Computer science has had a far-reaching impact on many disciplines and on society in general. In this course, we'll discuss just a few of these issues for 15-20 minutes during Friday lectures.

The topics we may cover briefy are

• the effect of the Internet (Four Puzzles from Cyberspace, an excerpt from Codev2 by Lawrence Lessig; "Why you can't cite Wikipedia in my class" HTML, PDF), Google Competitor to Wikipedia
• Computing and education
  • The One Laptop Per Child Project (Also relevant to the Digital Divide.)
• Computers and Medicine
  • Computers 'spot Alzheimer's fast'
  • Supercomputer 'virtual human' to help fight disease
  • Design of Patient Tracking Tools May Have Unintended Consequences
• Digital divide
  • The One Laptop Per Child Project
    A Follow Up Story
• Computing and the environment

  Sensor Networks for Environmental Monitoring

  • ZebraNet overview, article
  • Volcano Monitoring, paper

  Applying graphs to social networks of zebras

  Green computing

  • Internet Helps Americans Save More Energy Every Year
  • Could smart traffic lights stop motorists fuming?
• Volunteer computing
  • PS3 network enters record books
• Computing and the sciences
  • Solving the Oil Equation
• Computer Science and Policy:
  • Computer Scientists to Congress: Don't Tell Colleges to Install Filters on Networks
• Electronic voting
  • Voting with (Little) Confidence
  • The Risks of Electronic Voting (requires ACM Digital Library access)
  • Princeton Scientists Create Vote-Stealing Program
• Diversity in computing
  • Patenting the Co-ed Code
  • Black IT Employment
  • Five Myths about Girls and Science
  • Alan Turing - the founder of computer science, cracked the German Engima code in WWII, a gay man
  • Grace Hopper (her bug) and conferences celebrating women and diversity in computing
• Bugs!
  • History's Worst Software Bugs
  • A Bug and a Crash
• Computing and entertainment
  • If you like U2, you'll like ... Metallica?
  • Satellite TV Soccer Moms Will Hate
  • Eye-tracking game hides baddies in plain view
  • Privacy Issues in Facebook
• And more...
  Accidental Algorithms

Remember that you can earn extra credit for reviewing additional articles about computer science or its effects on other disciplines.

Write Ups

Before 10 a.m. on Friday, you will submit a short write up of the assigned article(s) for the given topic as a comment/reply on the course blog through the Department Portal. The write up should include

• How interesting you found this article on a scale of 0 to 9, with 0 being least interesting and 9 being most interesting.
• A summary of the three most important points in the article(s)
• How the article affected your understanding of CS and how it relates to other areas
• How the article relates to our course specifically (if at all)
• One question for class discussion

Discussion

We will discuss the articles briefly on Friday, in small groups and as a class. You are expected to actively participate in the discussion.

If you miss class when we discuss a broader issue, you cannot make up the discussion points, even with advanced notice. Nothing can replace that discussion. Consider doing extra credit to make up those points.

Grading

Your grade for each assignment will be worth 10 points:

• 6 points for the blog posting
• 4 points for actively participating in the discussion in small groups and as a class