Computer Science 312 Syllabus for Spring 2006

Dr. Carol E. Wolf Office 163 William St. 215

Website:

Office Hours: Mondays and Wednesdays 1-3:30

Text: Annual Editions: Computers in Society, 2005-06, Paul De Palma, editor,

McGraw Hill/Duskin, 2004.

Date / Group / Chapter / Topic
Jan 23 / Overview of course, creation of groups
Five Things We Need to Know about Technological Change
Jan 25 / A / 2 / Whom to Protect and How
A / 3 / P2P and the Promise of Internet Equality
Jan 30 / B / 4 / The Computer and the Dynamo
B / 5 / The Productivity Paradox
C / 6 / As Silicon Valley Reboots, the Geeks Take Charge
Feb 1 / C / 7 / At Bell Labs, Hard Times Take Toll on Pure Science
D / 8 / Playing the Search-Engine Game
Feb 6 / D / 9 / Free to Choose
A / 10 / Brain Circulation: How High-Skill Immigration Makes Everyone Better Off
A / 11 / Software
Feb 8 / B / 12 / Letter from Silicon Valley
B / 13 / They're Watching You
Feb 13 / C / 14 / Security vs. Privacy
C / 15 / Searching for Answers
Feb 15 / D / 16 / Is That a Computer in Your Pants?
D / 17 / Dating a Blogger, Reading All About It,
Feb 22 / A / 18 / From Virtual Communities to Smart Mobs
A / 19 / Lure of Data: Is It Addictive?
Feb 27 / B / 20 / Want to Rule the World?
B / 21 / Making Meaning: As Google Goes, So Goes the Nation
Mar 1 / C / 22 / The World According to Google
C / 23 / The Copyright Paradox
Mar 6 / D / 24 / You Bought It. Who Controls It?
D / 25 / Bad Documents Can Kill You
Mar 8 / Midterm Exam
Mar 13 / A / 26 / Why Women Avoid Computer Science
A / 27 / Point, Click…Fire
Mar 15 / B / 28 / The Doctrine of Digital War
B / 29 / Star Wars by '04? Forget It.
Library Research Document Due
Mar 27 / C / 30 / As Goes Software…
C / 31 / Homeland Insecurity
Mar 29 / D / 32 / Code Red For The Web
D / 33 / The Virus Underground
Survey Document Due
Apr 3 / A / 34 / The Spam Wars
A / 35 / Spammers Can Run but They Can't Hide
Apr 5 / B / 36 / The Level of Discourse Continues to Slide
B / 37 / Immigration And The Global IT Work Force
Apr 10 / C / 38 / The Quiet Revolution
C / 39 / Dot Com for Dictators
Apr 12 / D / 40 / Kabul's Cyber Cafe Culture
D / 41 / The Hackers' Lure
Apr 17 / A / 42 / Japan's Generation of Computer Refuseniks
A, B / 43 / Humanoid Robots
Apr 19 / B / 44 / The Real Scientific Hero of 1953
C / 45 / The Race to Computerise Biology
Apr 24 / C, D / 46 / Why Listening Will Never Be the Same
D / 47 / Minding Your Business
Apr 26 / Presentation of Group Projects
May 1 / Review

When your group has been assigned two chapters, divide them between you and each report on one. The report should consist of several PowerPoint slides containing the main points of the article and a summary of a related article found on the Internet, in a magazine or a newspaper. The related article should, if possible, be more recent and bring the topic up to date. Hand in the summary of the related article and a copy of it. If you have any problems printing, email the summary to me, and I will print it out for you. You may also send me the PowerPoint slides and I will make sure that they can be shown on the classroom equipment.

Summaries should be double-spaced and brief. One or two pages are all right, but three pages will not be accepted. The slides should also be brief with no more than 4 or 5 bulleted items per slide. The summaries will be graded for both grammar and content. After they have been returned with corrections, the corrected versions should be copied into html and posted on a group website. These websites may be either on a server chosen by the group or on a PaceUniversity server. For the latter, either get a website through DoIT or on matrix.csis.pace.edu.

The group project will consist of a library research paper, a survey, a statistical analysis of the survey results and a conclusion. The entire project is due at the end of the semester. It should both be presented in class and posted on the website. At the end of the semester, zip up the entire contents of the website and send them to me. I will then post them on my website. No one in the group will receive a final grade until all the material has been posted on the site.

Grades will be determined by two written exams, a midterm and a final, all the presentations during the semester and the final project. Each one of these categories will count for 25% of the grade. All written materials, including exams, should be double-spaced. If your handwriting is hard to read, please print on your exams. Grammar will count on all documents, but spelling will only be graded on papers prepared ahead of time.

Additional Resources:

Herman T. Tavani, Ethics and Technology, Chapter 2, Wiley, 2004.

MLA Citation Style, 6th ed. (2003),

I. Lee. A Research Guide for Students. 4, 2004.

ACM Code of Ethics,

John L. Sullivan and Richard G. Niemi, editors, Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, Sage Publications Inc., 1983.

Link to Postman's Five Things We Need to Know about Technological Change

Helpful Grammar Handouts from Purdue On-Line Writing Lab

CS 312 Suggestions for Group Projects

  1. How computer usage differs between rich and poor schools.
  1. Why do so few women choose to work in IT?
  1. Are students doing less file sharing now after the RIA crack down?
  1. How private is data on the Internet? Are people buying more on-line than before?
  1. What are people doing about spam? Has it decreased after the new laws?
  1. What do people do to protect their computers from viruses and worms?
  1. What are employers now looking for? What is the effect of ‘off-shoring’?
  1. Who uses Internet phones, and what is their future?
  1. Does using a computer cause isolation or greater interaction with others?
  1. Is Internet dating effective, and who is doing it?
  1. How successful are robots? Who uses them?
  1. What is the availability of computers at Pace? How could it be improved?
  1. How secure are wireless connections? What are people doing to secure them?
  1. Where do people get news and political information?
  1. How safe is electronic voting, and did it affect the last election?
  1. Why are fewer students choosing IT as a major?
  1. How have IM, PDAs, IPods, etc. changed people’s lives?