Instructor: Magdalena Balazinska
Meeting times: Tuesdays 12:30pm-1:20pm, so feel free to bring your lunch to class.
Location: CSE 203.
Mailling list:
As computing becomes increasingly pervasive, computer science is touching our lives and society in a variety of both obvious and hidden ways: from computers in airplanes, voting machines, surgery rooms, and scientific laboratories to RFID chips implanted under the skin and spammers filling our inboxes. In this seminar, we discuss concrete examples of such broader impacts of computer science, paying special attention to the impacts of ongoing computer science research.
Target audience: Undergraduate students at all levels in the CSE major. Priority is given to ACM and ACM-W students to promote involvement in professional organizations.
We meet weekly. Every week a group of students presents a news article related to computing and society (e.g., a case of identity theft or a new invention that enables humans to control a robot with their thoughts). We discuss the article and the computer science or computer science research behind it. A group of students writes a blog entry about our discussion.
The seminar is graded as credit or no credit. To get credit, you must perform the following three tasks through the course of the quarter:
Here is a link to the class blog. We will use this blog to post summaries of our discussions.
Date |
Topic and readings | |
---|---|---|
09/30 |
Class CANCELLED |
|
10/07 |
Topic: Neurobotics Readings: Trying to give robots a human touch (Seattle PI) [article] [Prof. Matsuoka's home page] Additional info : Short video and some other extra information. Discussion notes: Slides and blog entry |
|
10/14 |
Topic: Nike+iPod Story and the Impacts of Security Research Readings: "Nike+ IPod = Surveillance" (Wired). [article] [Prof. Kohnos's home page] Presenters: Magda Balazinska Bloggers: Sandra Li and Linden Essa Discussion notes: Slides and blog entry |
|
10/21 |
Topic: Mozilla's Geode Readings: "Mozilla Geode to Join Google, Yahoo for Geolocation Web Services" (eWeek) [article]. Presenters: Mack Talcott and Blake Thomson Bloggers: Jonathon Ricaurte and Michael Eng Discussion notes:
|
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10/28 |
Topic: Quantum Internet Readings: Presenters: Sandra Li and Linden Essa Bloggers: Mack Talcott and Blake Thomson Discussion notes: Slides and blog entry |
|
11/04 |
Topic: Can we trust electronic voting machines? Readings:
Presenters: Jonathon Ricaurte and Michael Eng Bloggers: Benjamin Ullom and Sunil Garg Discussion notes: Slides and blog entry |
|
11/11 |
Veteran's Day Holiday |
|
11/18 |
Topic: Computing for the developing world Readings:
Presenters: Benjamin Ullom and Sunil Garg Bloggers: Kevin Wallace and Leilani Battle Discussion notes: Slides and blog entry |
|
11/25 |
Topic: Machine intelligence and its implications Readings: "Q&A: Kurzweil on tech as a double-edged sword" (CNet) [article] Presenters: Aida Urrutia, Hakson Teh Bloggers: Iva Dermendjieva and Sunetra Deshpande Discussion notes: Slides and blog entry
Topic 2 : The ethics of security disclosure Readings: "Seattle security expert helped uncover major design flaw on Internet" (SeattlePI) [article] Presenters: Kevin Wallace and Leilani Battle Bloggers: Iva Dermendjieva and Sunetra Deshpande Discussion notes: Slides and blog entry |
|
12/02 |
Topic: Integrating Embedded Systems with the Human Body Readings:
Presenters: Iva Dermendjieva and Sunetra Deshpande Bloggers: Aida Urrutia and Hakson Teh Discussion notes: Slides and blog entry |