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

For more detail, see the course outline. Be sure to read the notes on lectures as they are posted on this website; they are linked to the outline page, and they will evolve as the course develops. All webpages are subject to frequent and/or unannounced updates.

Prerequesites are CSE 9, 10 or 11, and the ability to read basic works in the humanities, especially sociology. Open to undergraduates with permission of the instructor. You will need to write short homework essays and a final paper in reasonably good English.

• Social Science, Technical Systems, and Cooperative Work, edited by Geoffrey Bowker, Susan Leigh Star, William Turner and les Gasser (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997).
• 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).
• The Scientific Revolution, Steven Shapin (Chicago, 1996).
• Aramis, or the Love of Technology, Bruno Latour (Harvard, 1996).
• Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcer, Michael White (Addison-Wesley, 1998).
• Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey Bowker and Leigh Star (MIT, 1999).
• 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 three items below, especially item 5; obviously your class participation and homework should reflect your familiarity with the readings.

1. Course notes
2. Reading assignments
3. Homework assignments
4. Class discussion
5. Projects - due the last day of class.