SCI 199Y: The Impact of Society Upon Computers

Some possible project topics

"The proper study of humans is humanity"   -- Alexander Hupope

These topic ideas will be discussed some time in the first few classes.
See notes below.

Your topic must be approved and you need to circulate a "blurb" in advance.

• Science and disloyalty
• John Harrison's clocks
• Calendars
• Spiritualism and artificial agents
• Other renaissance topics? Mediaeval topics?
• Data collection and social stratification

• Computers and the Second World War
• Population tracking
  • basic social planning and censuses
  • what the "punch card" meant to average people
  • IBM's involvement on the world stage

• Security (including law-enforcement) tracking of individuals, by government and non-governmental agencies
• Database aggregation
• Electronic security systems (lock systems)
• Privacy issues
• RFID

• Public anger at computer failures; lack of public anger at computer failures

• Risk management and computers
• 14 August 2003 blackout

• Computer users' rights
• Workplace issues
• The human-computer interface
• "Computer Lib"
  • Computer "priesthood"
  • The advent of microcomputers in the 1970s
  • Populist computer movements
  • "The software flap"
  • The Citizen Lab

• Personal uses of cryptography
• Computers as argumentation
• Computer technology specifically intended to supplant something
  • The "paperless office"
  • e-cash

• Communications topics
  • Cell phones, pagers
  • Internet access: public access unix, e-mail, home broadband, internet cafés
  • Advertising on the internet (especially the web)
  • "Deregulation" and communications networks
• "All software sucks" (muttered by sysadmins everywhere). Why?
  • Bloatware
  • Microsoft monopoly
  • Forces in favour of low-quality software
• The World-Wide Web
  • Subtopics about its effect on high-speed internet access at home; the domain name system; then indirectly internet security (good and bad); etc.
  • Access to government via the web (its effect on society)
  • "Blogs" (web logs)
• High-speed home internet service

• The enemy built in to your computer
  • (many possible subtopics)
• Our computer agents against the enemy
  • (several possible subtopics)
• Computer security
  • (a few possible subtopics)
• "Social engineering"

• The impact of computers on society. -- The feedback loop: computers affect society and this paves the way for further changes to the computers (e.g. by popular outcry!).
  • Workplace issues
  • People's complicity with large-scale data tracking efforts
  • Telephone solicitation and spam and similar
  • "Information overload"

• Alien computer science
• Some failures of society to have an impact upon computers.

I have some ideas and references for each of these topics. You should work out a title and "blurb" for your topic in consultation with me; this blurb and any suggested references will be posted on the course web page by Friday of the previous week.

Here are some general things which can be discussed about a deployment-of-technology topic. I also have some specific suggested questions in mind for many of these topics.

• Technical background (brief -- mostly geared towards understanding the human issues, although a little coolness is permitted)
• How much choice do people have in the matter? That is, how much of the way something works is technical and how much is policy/politics?
• Who is making the decisions?
• What are their goals in making these decisions?
  • What do the policy-makers say?
  • What do their adversaries say?
  • What reasoning can you bring to bear on the matter? (Be concrete rather than speculative here.)
• What effect is this policy actually having? (positive and negative)
  • Whom do these effects hinder and whom do they serve?
• Is it worth it? That is, do the benefits outweigh the consequences? Does this differ between affected populations?
• Is there a proposal to ameliorate the negative effects?
  • Is this being enacted? Why or why not? What are people's motivations and what are they accomplishing?