CS349  Contemporary Issues in Computer Science 
Spring, 2013
Alan Cline and Elaine Rich

Schedule of Topics and Reading Assignments

This schedule is approximate.  We will update it as the semester progresses.

 

January 15    Introduction

January 17    Introduction, continued

·         Ethics for the Information Age, Chapter 1 (Introduction)   NOTECARD

 

January 22    Introduction, continued

·         Bynum, Terrell Ward, “A Very Short History of Computer Ethics”

·         TURN IN your response to the Social Science via Google Search assignment

January 24    Ethics

·         Ethics for the Information Age, Chapter 2  (Ethics)   NOTECARD

·         TURN IN your first news article.  We will do this regularly on Thursdays unless otherwise specified.

 

January 29    Ethics, continued

·         Bertrand Russell, “Prolog” to Autobiography

·         TURN IN your solution to the “How I Lived My Life” assignment.

January 31    Ethics, continued 

 

February 5     Ethics, continued

·         TURN IN your solution to the What Jobs? assignment.

·         If you missed class on Thursday because of the career fair, turn in your response to the Kantian problem.

February 7     Ethics, continued

·         TURN IN a printout of your results on the “many voices” Quiz.

 

February 12  Meet with us about project topic

·         TURN IN your solution to the What’s Right assignment

February 14  Ethics, continued

 

February 19  Intellectual Property Law - Guest speaker: Stephen Stout (Ph.D, LLD, Vinson & Elkins)

·         Ethics for the Information Age, Chapter 4  (Intellectual Property)    NOTECARD

February 21  Using the Bits

·         TURN IN your project outline

 

February 26  Privacy

·         Ethics for the Information Age, Chapter 5  (Privacy)   NOTECARD

February 28  Privacy

 

March 5          Privacy

·         TURN IN in your responses to the set of questions about Tom Mitchell’s opinion piece on data and privacy.

March 7          Privacy

 

March 12       SPRING BREAK

 

March 19       Artificial Intelligence

·         TURN IN First draft of term paper

·         Ethics for the Information Age, Chapter 8 (Reliability)     NOTECARD

March 21       Artificial Intelligence

·         Ethics for the Information Age, Chapter 9 (Ethics and Reliability)    NOTECARD

·         TURN IN a written progress report on your video

 

March 26       Cybersecurity  - Guest Speaker: Dr. Fred Chang

·         Ethics for the Information Age, Chapter 7 (Security)     NOTECARD

·         “War in the Fifth Domain” 

·         TURN IN Your comments on the other person’s paper that you received last week

March 28       Risk and Reliability

·         TURN IN your response to the ACM’s TIA letter question

·         “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”, Alan Turing

 

April 2             Risk and Reliability

·         “The Ethical Frontiers of Robotics”, Noel Sharkey (Science, Vol. 322, pp. 1800-1801)

·         TURN IN your response to the questions we’ve raised about Sharkey’s article

·         “Sounds Like Bach”, Douglas Hofstadter

·         “Robotic Nation”, Marshall Brain

April 4             What Makes Us Us?

·         “What is the Singularity?”

·         TURN IN your response to the singularity quiz

 

April 9             The Future of Technology

·         “Manna”, Marshall Brain (Note: There are 8 chapters, each in a separate file.  Read them all.)  NOTECARD

·         TURN IN your final video

April 11          Student videos

 

April 16          Student videos

·         The Lights in the Tunnel   NOTE: This is an entire book.  Do not procrastinate.   NOTECARD

April 18          Student videos

·         TURN IN your response to the Resource Allocation Problem

 

April 23          Student videos

·         Turn in your response to the (rice) Problem

April 25          Student videos

 

April 30          More on the Future of Technology

·         “The Evolution of Mind in the Twenty-First Century”, Ray Kurzweil (handout)  NOTECARD

May 2             Prizes and wrap-up

·         TURN IN Final draft of your term paper