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 米 (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