Course
times: Tuesdays and Thursday, 2:40 - 4:00
Location: L 380
Professor:
L Jean Camp
Overview
How does Google choose to order the displayed news stories and web sites? Does it matter that "The Unauthorized Biography " is the fifth or fiftieth link on a search for George Bush?
Will the Total Information Awareness project work in terms of obtaining government profiles of all citizen digital action, or will the project have all of the flaws of the fictional Minority Report without any corresponding decrease in terror?
The answer to these political questions - news coverage, privacy, consumer rights - are inherently interdisciplinary. Changes in technology can reify or undermine existing power relationships. Individuals and institutions choose technology that undermines or verifies their own practices and values.
How are values embedded into technology? As software and computer networks become more complex policy makers are faced with a bewildering array of claims about the future. In this course you will learn the tools to make technical choices that support, rather than undermine, your goals and values.
The bulk of this class consists of examinations of particular technologies which have been designed for particular values or have had those values assigned to them by social or technical critics. Technologies have been designed for privacy, to defeat censorship, and to provide anonymous platforms for speech. Yet these technologies do not always support the values the designers claim to address.
This class requires weekly single page writing assignments and a final project. The final project need not be about information technology design but can address issues of values in design in transportation, architecture, etc.
Understanding how technical design is political is the fundamental basis of this class. This class examines how values are embedded into software. Code is not law, yet code can rule and limit. Through your own project, evaluating the projects of others, and hearing peer evaluations you will master the management techniques needed to select technologies that will enhance program and personal values.
Grading
& Important Dates
One
page question from the reading 20% due in class, 10 classes
Final
paper 80% as follows:
topic
proposal 10% due Thurs. Oct. 30
bibliography
and outline 10% due Thurs. Nov. 20
presentation
10% due Tues. Dec. 9
evaluations
of others' presentations 10% due Tues. Jan. 13
final
paper 40% due Tues. Jan. 13
Course
Topics
Topic 1:
Technological Determinism
How
society is influenced by technology, and how technology influences
society. Some theory with an emphasis on historical cases of
information technologies (e.g., the telephone and the printing
press). When code is law, and when law defines code. Finally the
issue of accountability in information and communications
technologies.
Topic
2: Cases of Values in Information Technology
The
cases considered here have been well examined. Examples rich with
rhetoric are stripped to the essentials.
Topic
3: Privacy
Rather than a
broad discussion of the nature of privacy (a long debated
philosophical topic) a tightly focused examination of various
policies and technologies proposed to enhance privacy.
Topic
4: Digital Rights Management & Copyright
Digital
rights management systems present themselves as being based on
copyright. An examination of copyright and DRM.
Topic
5: Filtering and Searching
Examination
of filtering programs, biases, and programs for ` internet content
selection. Is Google too powerful for our own good? Are filtering
programs inherently biased against conservative or liberal ideals?
Topic
6: Technical Design and Equity
Domestic
issues of universal service and the implications of network design
for the developing world are the topics of these classes. From
quality of service to the assumptions about network clients,
technologies can be made more of less accessible. Open and closed
code are addressed as a subset of the question of equity.
Topic
7: General Principles
How
the battles of values are being fought in cyberspace. The current
state of the search for a single framework.
Topic
8: Presentations and Closing
In-class
presentations of projects. Students examine the analysis of other
students. Final discussion of the project requirement.