CS 195, Social Implications of Computing

Brian Harvey		781 Soda Hall
642-8311		bh@cs.berkeley.edu

Office hours:  Tue 1-3, Wed 3:20-5


General Course Information
==========================

As indicated below, each week has a topic, more or less.  This first week is
a general overview of the course and the topics.

PLEASE READ THE INDICATED PAPERS BEFORE EACH WEEK'S DISCUSSION.  Most of the
readings should be easy going, with only a few exceptions.  (I'll try to warn
you about those in advance.)  But if you don't do the reading, the quality of
the discussions will suffer.  You are expected to attend class and participate
in discussions.

Each student will pick one topic for more intensive study, leading to a term
paper and perhaps a presentation to the class.  (Your topic may or may not be
the same as one of mine.)  Since the term paper is your only written work in
this course, I want it to be good -- scholarly, honest, articulate,
well-organized.  To this end, you will prepare the term paper in three stages:

	* A one-page proposal (including initial bibliography) due week 5.
	* A draft version (your best effort!) due week 11.
	* The final version due week 14.

I'll respond to each of these stages within a week.  THESE ARE FIRM DEADLINES;
they are chosen to allow time for recovery if what you turn in is not of
acceptable quality.  (Last semester I required post-final versions from three
out of about 30 students.)  Typical papers are 5 to 10 pages, but don't pad;
quality counts much more than quantity.

I have strong opinions on some of these topics, and I believe that the road to
academic integrity is for me to make my biases clear, rather than to pretend
not to have opinions.  But it's also my job to be sure that the full range of
opinion is fairly presented and taken seriously; if, as sometimes happens,
most of the class agrees with me about some point I'll do my best to argue the
other side of the question.  The same standards apply to your papers: You
don't have to agree with me; what you have to do is show that you understand
and take seriously points of view different from your own, and try to explain
why your arguments are better than theirs.  (But not every paper is
necessarily an opinion paper!)

Textbooks:

[EWS]	Computers, Ethics, and Society (Second Edition)
	edited by M. David Ermann, Mary B. Williams, and Michele S. Shauf.
	Oxford University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-19-510756-X

[Lud]	High Noon on the Electronic Frontier: Conceptual Issues in Cyberspace
	edited by Peter Ludlow.  MIT Press, 1996, ISBN 0-262-62103-7

There is also a course reader, at Copy Central on Hearst Ave west of Euclid.

In addition, each week there will be handouts of relevant recent articles,
often found online.  (Please bring in your own discoveries!)

This syllabus is online at  http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs195
and the class newsgroup is  ucb.class.cs195

Schedule:

Week  Dates	Topic				Readings

 1    8/29,31	Intro				EWS 3-26 (for Fri)

 2    9/5	Guest: Jim Demmel (CITRIS)
      9/7	Guest: Barbara Simons (privacy)	see week 3

 3    9/12,14	Privacy				EWS 69-76, 89-113, 208-220;
						Lud 173-249

 4    9/19,21	Intellectual Property		EWS 220-239; Lud 1-121

 5    9/26,28	Cracking			EWS 77-88; Lud 123-163
						Wright, "Hackwork" (in reader)
	(PAPER PROPOSAL DUE WED 9/26)

 6    10/3,5	Ethics				EWS 33-66;  MacIntyre,
						  _After Virtue_ (reader)

 7    10/10,12	Self				EWS 114-122, 128-151
						Turkle, _The Second Self_ and
						  _Life on the Screen_ (reader)

 8    10/17,19	Community			EWS 26-32, 152-157; Lud 311-457

 9    10/24,26	Pornography and Censorship	Lud 251-310;  Goodman,
						  "Pornography, Art..." (reader)

10    10/31,11/2  Risks				Neumann, "Illustrative Risks..."
						Levenson/Turner "...Therac-25.."
						Collins et al, "How Good..."
						Gladwell, "Blowup" (reader)

11    11/7,9	The Nature of Work		EWS 161-207; Hochheiser,
						 "Workplace Database.." (reader)
	(FIRST PAPER DRAFT DUE WED 11/7)

12    11/14,16	Computers and Education		Papert, "Mathophobia..."
						Schank/Cleary, "What Makes..."
						Sewell, "Software Styles"
						Goodman, "The Present Plight.."
						Buber, "Education" and
						  "The Education of Character"
						  (reader)

13    11/21	Professional Ethics		EWS 271-340
		(no class Fri 11/23)

14    11/28,30	Computers and War		Chapman, "A Moral Project..."
						Page, "Star Wars..." (reader)
	(FINAL PAPER DUE WED 11/28)

15    12/5,7	Summary