Remember that your papers are due on 4 December!

Be sure to check this website frequently; important notices will be posted near the top of the homepage; homework and readings will be posted on their respective webpages, not given in class. You should reload pages frequently, because I may well be editing the same page that you are reading! All webpages are subject to frequent unannounced updates.

The lecture notes are an important part of the course, and are linked to the outline page; they will evolve as the course develops. However, the class notes are not a substitute for attending class or doing the readings - much more information is given on some topics in lectures and readings, and there will also be hardcopy handouts, guest speakers, diagrams drawn on the board, interactive discussions, and more in class. Also, the emphasis on topics in the notes may not reflect the importance of material. In short, all of lectures, notes, text, and other readings are necessary for this course.

Homework answers from different students with strongly overlapping content will be assigned a grade of zero, and there will be more drastic consequences for repeat offenders. You can talk with other students about how to approach homework problems, but you are not allowed to work together on solutions. See the Integrity of Scholarship Agreement (from Scott Baden) and UCSD's official policies on Plagiarism; see also the most recent amended policy (sorry, it's in MS Word). You are expected to abide by these rules; failure to do so can have very serious consequences.

This course explores issues on the interfaces among technology, science, and society, with a special focus on information technology and ethics. Topics include privacy, the internet and the web, spam, electronic commerce, chat rooms, ethics, requirements engineering, actor-network theory, Kuhn's theory of paradigms, post-modernism, neo-classical economics, ubiquitous computing, and more. See the course outline for details.

Prerequesites are CSE 9, 10 or 11, the ability to read basic works in the humanities, especially sociology, and the ability to write reasonable English. You will have to write short homework essays and a final paper. The course open to undergraduates with permission of the instructor.

Tuesday, Thursday, 9:30-10:50 am, Sequoia 148

Instructor Office Hours: Monday, 10 - 11 am, 3131 APM.

• Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices, edited by Rob Kling (Academic, 1996). ISBN 0-12-415040-3.

• The Social Life of Information, John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid (Harvard Business School, 2000).
• A Gift of Fire, Sara Baase (Prentice Hall, 2003, second edition). This is oriented towards law.
• Social Science, Technical Systems, and Cooperative Work, edited by Geoffrey Bowker, Susan Leigh Star, William Turner and Les Gasser (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997).
• Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star (MIT, 1999).
• Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics>, Mark Johnson (Chicago, 1994).
• High Wired, edited by Cynthia Haynes and Jan Rune Holvevik (Michigan, 1998).
• The Cultures of Computing, edited by Susan Leigh Star (Blackwell, 1995).
• Computers, Minds and Conduct, Graham Button, Jeff Coulter, John Lee and Wes Sharrock (Polity 1995).
• Requirements Engineering: Social and Technical Issues, edited by Marina Jirotka and Joseph Goguen (Academic Press, 1994).
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn (Chicago, 1962).
• Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, by Ludwig Fleck (Chicago, 1981).
• The Scientific Revolution, Steven Shapin (Chicago, 1996).
• Aramis, or the Love of Technology, Bruno Latour (Harvard, 1996).
• Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer, Michael White (Addison-Wesley, 1998).
• Isaac Newton, James Gleick (Pantheon, 2003).
• Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts, Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar (Princeton, 1986).
• The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA, Diane Vaughan (Chicago, 1996).
• Consilience, Edward O. Wilson (Vintage, 1998).
• Computation and Human Experience, Philip Agre (Cambridge, 1997).

Grades will be based on the last four items below, especially the last; the extent to which your class participation, your homework, and your project demonstrate your familiarity with, and ability to apply, significant ideas in the course, will be important in their evaluation.

1. Course notes
2. Reading assignments
3. Homework assignments
4. Class participation
5. a short vocabulary quiz towards the end of the quarter
6. Projects - these are due the last day of (this) class.

• Homepage of Andrew Odlyzko, fascinating material on networks, privacy, electronic publishing, electronic commerce, etc.
   
• Benetech, a non-profit organization seeking to apply Silicon Valley thinking to help disadvantaged communities through technology.
   
• The homepage of Phil Agre at UCLA contains many interesting publications, a good bibliography, and several relevant links.
• Homepage of Geoff Bowker, interesting material on sociology of science, including biodiversity informatics, information infrastructure, classification systems, medical records, and more.
   
• Homepage of Leigh Star, interesting material on sociology of science, including boundary objects, classification systems, information systems, and more.
• Homepage of Jennifer Preece; see in particular, the subsite on her new book, Online Communities.