| Lectures: | Mondays and Wednesdays 3:00-4:00 p.m. | BA 1210 |
| Tutorials: | Tuesdays 3:00-4:00 p.m. | BA 2179 Surnames A-J |
| BA 3000 Surnames K-Z | ||
Although concerns about computers and society are more than 30 years old, in recent years there has been a dramatice upsurge of interest in the subject, as seen by an increase in the number of books and journals, the creation of new institutes that focus on the subject in prestigous universities, and the World Summit on Information Technology conducted by the United Nations in 2005.
In previous years this course has attempted to cover all of the many aspects. This has resulted in some important issues receiving scant attention and too little time for class discussion. The major topics are as outlined below. This year after an introductory Framework, only a selection of topics will be treated in class, although any of the others are suitable for the term essay which is an important component of the final mark.
A Framework
Ethical systems
Computers and Professionalism
Technologies and Society
Privacy and Freedom of Information
Background and History
Surveillance by Computers, Data Mining, New Technologies
Privacy Laws, Whistle Blowing
Computers and Work
Technology and Employment
The Information Society
Outsourcing, E-Commerce
The Future of Work
Computers and Development
The Digital Divide
The World Summit on Information Technology
Open Source Software
E-Learnng and E-Teaching
Virtual Classes
Books, Libraries and Google
Restructuring Society
Community Networks
E-Government and E-Democracy
Intellectual Property Rights
Blogs and the New Journalism
The Internet
Origins and Development
Content Regulation and Control
Network neutrality
The Future of the Internet
Trust in Cyberspace
System reliability, Sofware engineering
Risks: Spyware, malware, phishing, pornography
Protective measures, Legal actions
What's Next?
For the Internet, For e-mail, For Society
Text: Michael J. Quinn, Ethics for the Information Age, 2nd ed., Addison Wesley, 2006
Additional References
These have been placed on short term loan in the library. The first three were used as texts in previous years of the course, and they all contain valuable materials.
Herman Tavani, Ethics and Technology: Ethical Issues in an Age of Information and Communication Technologies, Wiley, 2003
Sara Baase, A Gift of Fire, 2nd ed Prentice Hall, 2002
Kevin Bower, Ethics and Computing, IEEE Press, 2nd ed., 2001
Richard Spinello, CYBERETHICS: Morality and Law in Cyberspace, 3rd ed., Jones and Bartlett, 2006
George Reynolds, Ethics in Information Technology, 2nd ed Thomson, 2007
WWW sites and Online readings
There are web sites, online readings and blogs for every topic in the course, thousand in all. Learn to find your way around in the web,and how to cope with Internet availability problems by acquiring documents you need well in advance of the applicable lectures. Before the advent of the web, newsgroups were a primary mode of information exchange on the Internet; they are still of interest and here are some relevant to the course:
There is a newsgroup for the course which you are expected to access regularly. It is at ut.cdf.csc300h Part of the term mark is based on this participation.Course Accounts All students who do not have a course account will be issued one at the Computing Disciplines Facility (cdf) www.cdf.toronto.edu. Login name will be of the form C4****** where the asterisks correspond to the first six letters of the surname.If the surname is less than six letters, the given name is appended to it. If several students have similar surnames (and given names, if applicable) then the last character is typically advanced by one or more letters of the alphabet. For example three students named John Smith, Joan Smith and Jane Smith may have their course accounts as c4smithj, c4smithk, c4mithl. Your initial passeword is your student number, and should be changed when first login. These accounts provide you with e-mail, Newsgroups, and WWW access, locally and by remote dial-in. This is a Unix (Linux) environment. You should be aware that faculty rules allow monitoring of your e-mail.
Readings from the reading assignmesnts and Web sites are organized to correspond with the lectures. You should read as much as possible before the corresponding class.
Lectures, Tutorials, Newsgroups
Lectures are held twice a week, tutorials once. Participation in class, the class newsgroup, and tutorials is worth 10% of the final mark. You are expected to sign into the newsgroup regularly,and not just by lurking, but also by contributing comments, opinions, and informing your classmates of intersting articles and websites that you have come across. "Attendance" will be take in the newsgroup by asking you, on occasio, to respond by sending a reply note within 72 hours of the request to do so has been posted.
Attendance will also be taken in tutorials.
Blog Assignment
The first assignment, on Blogs, is worth 15% of the final mark.
From Wikipedia:
"A weblog (usually shortened to blog) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of
periodic articles (normally in reverse chronological order)."
"Blogs range in scope from individual diaries to arms of political campaigns, media programs and corporations. They range in scale from the writings of one occasional author, to the colloboration of a large community of writers. Many weblogs enable visitors to leave public comments which can lead to a community of readers centered
around the blog; others are noninteractive."
For the assignment you are to report on your experience with blogs. If you maintain one of your own, an account of your reason for doing so, its history, and your interaction with readers would be of interest. If you are a regular reader of one or more, an account of why you do so, and what you learn from them would be appropriate. If you have had no experience with them to date, find two or three using the list given below, follow them for a while, and report on your findings and opinion of them. This assignment is due October 24.
Four tutorials are dedicated to formal, structured debates by students in groups of four, on specified resolutions chosen from the list below. Form your teams and sign up with your tutor beforehand. All tutorials hold the debates on the same day, so teams in different tutorial groups may choose the same topic. The tutors will maintain a schedule and sign-up list for the debates. You may identify your team-mate when you indicate your choice. Choosing your topic early will give you the widest choice of resolution, and you should sign up by the October 10 tutorial.
The debates are organized as follows:Time limitations, and the fact that there will sometimes be two debates in a tutorial period, make it necessary to enforce time limits strictly. This means that you must be well organized, concise and succinct in makingyour points. Do not read your presentations, but brief notes are helpful.
Evaluation criteria will include knowledge of the subject, presentation of the material, cogency of the arguments, responses to the issues raised, speaking style,and teamwork.
Each student’s grade will be determined both by his or her individual presentation, and by the overall work of the team. This is worth 15% of the final grade.
| October 24 | Security Trumps Privacy: Inevitable A UN-type agency to control the Web is inevitable |
| October 31 | Outsourcing is benficial to all countries involved Education, the market, and current policies will eliminate the Digital Divide |
| November 7 | Like television, the Web will be captured by commercial interests Computers should not be used in early school years |
| November 14 | Books and Libraries will shrink in importance as the Web expands Sooner or later, there will have to be a charge for sending e-mail |
Twenty five percent of the final mark will be based on an essay which can take either of two forms, Standard or In-Class, according to your choice.
Standard essays are due on November 28 and require a scholarly analysis of the topic delivered in the format usually expected of such work. The topic may be taken from the list provided below, or be on a subject where you have had a personal experience or interest. The subject must be on an issue, not on a technical aspect of computers, and if it is your own, it should be approved by me. You need to gather lots of data, ground your submission on facts, and show evidence of serious reading on the subject.
The body of your paper should be about 15-20 typed, double-spaced pages (2500+ words), and must include a Reference list (in proper format) of all sources and quotations. There should be a cover page, giving your name, student number, course name, TA, date and title. In addition you should provide an Abstract, consisting of a single paragraph of 50-150 words, stating the thesis and scopeof your paper, and a Table of Contents. To help you select your topic and get started early, you are to hand in a Preliminary Abstract of 50-100 words, giving the provisional title and describing the scope of your planned topic, by the October 24 tutorial. (You may change your topic by submiting an new Preliminary Abstract). It will be returned, possibly with comments and suggestions. There are no marks assigned for this but 5 marks will be deducted for any essay for which no abstract was submitted.
Dr. Margaret Proctor is the University's Coordinator for Writing Support. A copy of her leaflet "Writing at the University" is available at the Computer Science Undergraduate Office, and at her web site http://www.utoronto.ca/writing . She has a document "How Not to Plagiarize" (very much worth reading).Also, see Quinn Appendix A. Plagiarism is an extremly serious offence, and is dealt with severely, if detected and proven. See http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~fpitt/plagiarism.html
Students who elect the Standard essay option agree that the essay will be submitted in machine-readable as well as in paper form, so that it can be reviewed by a commercial program from Turnitin for the detection of plagiarism.
All submitted papers will be included as source documents in the Turnitin reference database, solely for the purpose of detecting plagiarism in such papers.. The terms that apply to the University's use of the Turnitin service are described in the the company's website at http://www.turnitin.com
In-class Essays Because there have been objections to having essays submitted to and retained by Turnitin, you have the option of writing your essay in a tutorial period on a (single) assigned topic, one of four which will be designated in October. Although it is understood that in this form you cannot provide precise, formal references, it is still expected that your essay will show scholarship, depth, and evidence that you have consulted other sources.These essays will be marked by me; Standard essays by the tutors. For both, organization, formatting, spelling and sentence structure, are important.
A Classroom Response System, known as "Clickers" is now available for polling students during the course of a lecture. When the class is surveyed for its opinion on some matter, the choices are displayed. Students indicate their preference with their clickers, and the distribution is immediately presented as a histogram.
From time to time it will be interesting in to have the class indicate its understanding or offer its opinion on certain matters (e.g. the privacy of e-mail, or experience with blogs) and it is proposed to use clickers for this purpose.
To enable you to participate in these class surveys, it is recommended that you purchase a clicker. These may be used in any class with a Classroom Response System; they cost about $35, and are available at the campus bookstore (see http://www.iclicker.com )
| Session | Date | Instructor | Topic |
| 1 | Sept. 11 | Gotlieb | Course overview |
| 2 | 13 | Gotlieb | A Framework Ethical Systems |
| 3 | 18 | Gotlieb | IT Workers and Professionalism |
| 19 | Tutorial | Class organization, Assignments, Web searching | |
| 4 | 20 | Gotlieb | Codes of Conduct Whistleblowing |
| 5 | 25 | Gotlieb | Technologies and Society |
| 26 | Tutorial | Ethics Case Studies |
Participation in class and tutorials is bound more effective when you read beforehand about the topic of the day. At the beginning of each class two or three volunteers will be invited to say, in a few sentences, just what they might expect to remember about the topic in question ten years from now. Respondants will be credited with class participation.
Session| 1 | Sites particularly relevant to the course |
| 2 | Quinn Ch. 2 Baase Ch. 10.1 Spinello Ch. 1 Reynolds Appendix A |
| 3 | Quinn Ch. 9.1-2 Baase Ch. 10.2 Reynolds Ch. 2 Tutorial Asssignments, Web searching, Debates |
| 4 | Quinn Ch. 9.3, 9.6 Baase Appendix A Bowyer Ch. 3 |
| 5 | Article on Technology in Encyclopedia Brittanica Tom Standish The Victorean Internet, Thomas and Sons, 1998 Ursula Franklin The world of technology, Anansi, 1999 See Wikipedia article and Google citations on Technological Determinism Tutorial Ethics Case Studies Quinn Ch. 9.5 Ch.9 Discussion Questions Baase 10.3 Bowyer Ch. 3.8 |
After the first topic (A Framework) other topics will be discussed, depending on the interests of the class.
On the list below, place an X besides those topics that interest you most. Choose no more than four. Those receiving the greatest number of votes will be discussed in class. Essays may be written on any of the topics listed.