This course explores issues on the interface between information technology and society, with a special focus on ethical issues. Topics include ethical theory, privacy and security, spam, electronic commerce, the digital divide, open source software, medical informatics, bioinformatics, actor-network theory, ethnomethodology, and some neo-classical economics.

See the course outline for more detail, but note that the outline is subject to change as the course progresses. Prerequesites are CSE 9, 10 or 11, the ability to read basic works in the humanities, especially sociology, and the ability to write reasonable English. You will have to write short homework essays. There will be midterm and final exams.

Read the lecture notes as they are posted on this website; they are linked to the outline page, and they will evolve as the course develops. The class notes are not a substitute for attending class - much more information on some topics will be given in the lectures, and there will also be hardcopy handouts, guests, diagrams drawn on the board, interactive discussions, etc.

• Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices, edited by Rob Kling (Academic, 1996). ISBN 0-12-415040-3.

• The Social Life of Information, John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid (Harvard Business School, 2000).
• Computer Ethics, Deborah G. Johnson (Prentice Hall, 1994).
• Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics, Mark Johnson (Chicago, 1994).
• Evolutionary Origins of Morality, edited by Leonard D. Katz, (Imprint Academic, 2000); vol. 7, no. 1/2 of J. Consciousness Studies; available through amazon.com.
• Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, Edward O. Wilson (Random House, 1999).
• Computers, Minds and Conduct, Graham Button, Jeff Coulter, John Lee and Wes Sharrock (Polity 1995).
• Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star (MIT, 1999).
• Social Science, Technical Systems, and Cooperative Work, edited by Geoffrey Bowker, Susan Leigh Star, William Turner and Les Gasser (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997).
• Requirements Engineering: Social and Technical Issues, edited by Marina Jirotka and Joseph Goguen (Academic Press, 1994).
• The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA, Diane Vaughan (Chicago, 1996).
• High Wired, edited by Cynthia Haynes and Jan Rune Holvevik (Michigan, 1998).
• Computation and Human Experience, Philip Agre (Cambridge, 1997).
• Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer, Michael White (Addison-Wesley, 1998).
• Cognition in the Wild, Edwin Hutchings (MIT, 1996).

Grades will be based on the last three items below; the extent to which answers in your exams and homework reflect your familiarity with the course notes and readings will be important in their evaluation; 40% of the grade will be in a final test, 30% in the homework, and 30% in the midterm. Optional homework questions count half as much as required questions.

1. Course notes.
2. Reading assignments.
3. Homework assignments.
4. Midterm exam.
5. Final test.

• The homepage of Phil Agre at UCLA contains many interesting publications, a good bibliography, and several relevant links.
• Homepage of Geoff Bowker, interesting material on sociology of science, including biodiversity informatics, information infrastructure, classification systems, medical records, and more.
• Homepage of Leigh Star, interesting material on sociology of science, including boundary objects, classification systems, information systems, and more.
• Homepage of Jennifer Preece; see in particular, the subsite on her new book, Online Communities.