[Other Related Sites: T-Square Site (For Assignments/Grades), GA Tech Barcelona Program Site]
Instructor
- Professor Irfan Essa (Email is the BEST (and ONLY) option: irfan at cc dot gatech dot edu, please use CS4001: as the first words in the subject line)
- Office Hours: After class OR schedule via email appointment
Co-Instructor / Teaching Assistant
- Amha Mogus
Class Time/Location:
- See Google Calendar for GT-BCN Program at http://sites.google.com/a/gatech.edu/barcelona/home/schedule
- Location: Building C003, UPC/FIB Campus in Barcelona Spain.
T-Square Site
Class Description
Although Computing, Society and Professionalism is a required course for CS majors, it is not a typical computer science course. Rather than dealing with the technical content of computing, it addresses the effects of computing on individuals, organizations, and society, and on what yourresponsibilities are as a computing professional in light of those impacts. The topic is a very broad one and one that you will have to deal with almost every day of your professional life. The issues are sometimes as intellectually deep as some of the greatest philosophical writings in history – and sometimes as shallow as a report on the evening TV news. This course can do little more than introduce you to the topics, but, if successful, will change the way you view the technology with which you work. You will do a lot of reading, analyzing, and communicating (verbally and in writing) in this course. It will require your active participation throughout the semester and should be fun and enlightening.
Learning Objectives
In this class. you will learn about:
- Ethics: What do “right” and “wrong” mean anyway? How is “ethical” different from “legal”? We’ll learn about several philosophical approaches to ethics including utilitiarianism, Kantianism, stakeholder analysis, and virtue ethics. The goal is for students to be able to address ethical dilemmas with reasoned arguments, grounded in a combination of these ethical theories.
- Professional Ethics: What special responsibilities do we have as computing professionals? What do the Software Engineering Code of Ethics and ACM Code of Ethics say, and how can we use these in our daily practice?
- Computing and Society: In what ways does computer technology impact society? We’ll talk about a host of issues including privacy, intellectual property, and freedom of speech.
- Argumentation: How do you construct a well-reasoned argument? Whatever you go on to do in your professional career, your success will arguably depend more on your oral and written communication skills than on your technical skills. This class is one of your few and precious opportunities to work to improve those skills.
Core issues about computing and society and about computing professionalism.
Following issues will be touched on during the course of the term
- Impact of Computing on Society, Individuals and Organizations
- Governance and Regulation
- Free Speech
- Intellectual Property
- Privacy
- Security and law enforcement
- Dependability other than security.
- Professional Responsibility
- Media and its impact on computing and society
Text & Reading Material.
- Ethics for the Information Age, [EIA] by Michael J. Quinn, M., 3rd Edition, Addison Wesley,
2009 (ISBN: 0-321-53685-1) (Website) - Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings, [WA] (Concise Edition), by John D. Ramage, John C. Bean, and June Johnson, 5th Edition, 2010. ISBN: 0-205-66577-2 (Website)
- Other material available online or on electronic reserve.
Assignments and Grading
- Class Attendance & Participation (20 %)
- Homeworks (40%) [There will be 3-4 Assignments]
- Midterm (10%) (Here is a sample midterm exam.)
- Term Paper (30%)
- Includes: Proposal(3%), Sources (3%), Outline(3%), Draft (7%), Final Write-up (7%) and in Class Presentation (7%).
- All of the above subject to slight modifications, which will be announced in class.
Policies
- Class attendance is required. Late by 15 minutes, counts as an absence. Legitimate reasons for being excused from class include, personal issues, health (keep those germs away from class), interview, conference travel, etc. Travelling and exploring, assignments due in other classes, out to pick up friends, and other such excuses not accepted. Please inform Instructor of a planned absence via email before class.
- Homeworks Assignments will be graded on a list of criteria (specified on the assignment) such as quality of writing, completeness, insight into technical issues, insight into social issues, etc.Assignments are due at thestart of class on the day they are due.
- Late Assignments: Each student is allowed 2 days of late submission, to be USED only for assignments (and not for anything related to the final term paper!). You can use these 2 days for any assignment. After your “grace” days are expended, grading will be deducted as described above.
- Laptops use in class: Use of laptops in class room for purposes of note-taking is allowed, but ONLY and ONLY for that purpose. If a student is seen surfing the web during class, or chatting with someone, or emailing, then points will be deducted from the class attendance and participation portions of the grade (3% for each infraction, with a total of 3 max after which the whole class participation grade will be lost).
- Cellphones in class: Please turn your cellphone and other mobile devices to “silent” mode during class. Thanks.
- This class abides by the Georgia Tech Honor Code. All assigned work is expected to be individual, except where explicitly written otherwise. You are encouraged to discuss the assignments with your classmates; however, what you hand in should be your own work. If any work product was produced based on discussions with someone else (in the class OR outside), please specify clearly in the final turn-in.
Acknowledgments
Assignments and ideas on this syllabus build on those from everyone who has taught it before, especially Colin Potts, Amy Bruckman, Jim Foley, Mary Jean Harrold, and Spencer Rugaber.
Schedule
Here is a weekly and day by day schedule of the class. See T-Square @ GATech site for this class for details on readings and assignments. Some topics and readings are subject to change, so please make sure to check this site on weekly basis (at-least).
Week #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10
Week 1 (May 20-21, 2010)
- Thursday
- Welcome & Overview
- Friday (Special Class)
- Computing and Society
- READINGS: Quinn, Chapter 1.
- Case Study #1: Therac-25
- READING”Medical Devices: The Therac-25“ by Nancy Leveson.
- Computing and Society
Week 2 (May 24-28, 2010)
- Monday
- Spanish Holiday
- Wednesday
- No Class
- Thursday
- Reading Arguments
- READINGS: WA 1 & 2, Gordon Adams Petition (available via T-Square, look under Resources/Readings/..).
- Assignment #1 DUE
- Reading Arguments
- Friday (Special Class)
- Writing & Analyzing Arguments
- READINGS: WA 1 & 2
- Writing & Analyzing Arguments
Week 3 (May 31-June 4, 2010)
- Monday
- Deontology & Social Contract Theory
- READINGS: Quinn, Chapter 2
- Deontology & Social Contract Theory
- Wednesday
- Stakeholder Analysis & Virtue Ethics
- READINGS:
- In a Different Voice by Carol Gilligan, pp. 25-39 Virtue Ethics, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (available via T-Square, look under Resources/Readings/..)
- READINGS:
- Stakeholder Analysis & Virtue Ethics
- Thursday
- Core & Logical Structure of Arguments
- READINGS: W&A Chapter 3 & 4.
- Assignment #2 DUE.
- Core & Logical Structure of Arguments
Week 4 (Jun 7-11, 2010)
- Monday NO CLASS (swapped with CoA / ARCH classes)
- Wednesday
- Freedom of Speech
- READINGS: Quinn, Chapter 3.
- Freedom of Speech
- Thursday
- Privacy
- READINGS:
- Quinn Chapter 5, continued
- “Anonymized” data really isn’t–and here’s why by Nate Anderson in ars technica”
- EU-US Airline Passenger Data Disclosure (skim)
- READINGS:
- Privacy
Week 5 (Jun 14-18, 2010)
- No classes, Enjoy
Week 6 (Jun 21-25, 2010)
- Monday
- Privacy II
- Patriot ACT
- Wikipedia Articles:The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), The USA Patriot Act
- Do Artifacts Have Politics by Langdon Winner (See T-square/Resources/Readings (and READ it!)).
- Wednesday
- Evidence and Moving your Audience
- READING: WA Chapters 5, 6, 7
- Discussion of Final Term Papers.
- Evidence and Moving your Audience
- Thursday
- No Class (Spanish Holiday)
Week 7 (Jun 28-Jul 2, 2010)
- Monday
- Intellectual Property
- READINGS: Quinn Chapter 4.
- Intellectual Property
- Wednesday
- Mid Term Exam (available over T-square) Duration 2hrs.
- Thursday
- Media, Society and Freedom of Speech
- Video in class.
- When do People Cheat? Ethical Conduct in the Real World
- READING: Chapter from “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely (T-square, zip file)
- Media, Society and Freedom of Speech
Week 8 (Jul 5-9, 2010)
- No classes, Enjoy
Week 9 (Jul 12-16, 2010)
- Monday
- Wednesday
- Code of Ethics
- READINGS:
- Quinn Chapter 8
- Article “Using the New ACM Code of Ethics in Decision Making” by Anderson et al (T-square)
- READINGS:
- Code of Ethics
- Thursday
- Images/Photography and Ethics (Meet with CS 4475)
- READINGS
- “The Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock (Part 1)” Errol Morris (Oct 18, 2009) NY Times (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/the-case-of-the-inappropriate-alarm-clock-part-1/)
- “Thought Experiment No. 1, and More Inappropriate Alarm Clocks” Errol Morris (Nov 9, 2009) NY Times (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/thought-experiment-no-1-and-more-inappropriate-alarm-clocks/)
- “It Was All Started by a Mouse (Part 1)” Errol Morris (Jan 3, 2010) NY Times (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/it-was-all-started-by-a-mouse-part-1/)
- “It Was All Started by a Mouse (Part 2)” Errol Morris (Jan 4, 2010) NY Times (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/it-was-all-started-by-a-mouse-part-2/)
- “Thought Experiment No. 2″ Errol Morris (Jan 12, 2010) NY Times(http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/thought-experiment-2/)
- Other RESOURCES
- “Behind the Scenes: Tank Man of Tiananmen” (Jun 3, 2009); NY Times (http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/behind-the-scenes-tank-man-of-tiananmen/)
- “Behind the Scenes: A New Angle on History” (Jun 4, 2009); NY Times (http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/behind-the-scenes-a-new-angle-on-history/)
- “Essay: Chop and Crop” (Sep 17, 2009); NY Times (http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/essay-9/)
- “Behind the Scenes: Digital Manipulation” (July 8, 2009); NY Times (http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/behind-5/)
- “Behind the Scenes: Edgar Martins Speaks” (July 31, 2009) NY Times (http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/behind-10/)
- http://www.petapixel.com/2010/03/03/world-press-photo-disqualifies-winner/
- Video Rewrite. Example of Video Manipulation: Driving Visual Speech with Audio
- Mary101 Page. Examples of Video Manipulation. Speech driven, facial animation
Week 10 (Jul 19-22, 2010)
- Monday
- Work, Wealth, Society, Technology.
- READINGS: Quinn Chapter 9
- Simulation
- READING: Sedutions of Sim by Paul Starr
- Work, Wealth, Society, Technology.
- Wednesday
- In Class Presentations of Final Term Projects
- Thursday
- In Class Presentations of Final Term Projects