This course explores issues on the interfaces among technology, science, and society, with a special focus on information technology and ethics. Topics include privacy, the internet and the web, spam, electronic commerce, chat rooms, ethics, requirements engineering, actor-network theory, Kuhn's theory of paradigms, post-modernism, neo-classical economics, ubiquitous computing, and more. See the course outline for details.

Be sure to 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. All webpages are subject to frequent and/or unannounced updates. The class notes are not a substitute for attending class!

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 and a final paper. The course open to undergraduates with permission of the instructor.

• The Social Life of Information, John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid (Harvard Business School, 2000).
• Social Science, Technical Systems, and Cooperative Work, edited by Geoffrey Bowker, Susan Leigh Star, William Turner and Les Gasser (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997).
• Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices, edited by Rob Kling (Academic, 1996).
• Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star (MIT, 1999).
• Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics, Mark Johnson (Chicago, 1994).
• High Wired, edited by Cynthia Haynes and Jan Rune Holvevik (Michigan, 1998).
• The Cultures of Computing, edited by Susan Leigh Star (Blackwell, 1995).
• Computers, Minds and Conduct, Graham Button, Jeff Coulter, John Lee and Wes Sharrock (Polity 1995).
• Requirements Engineering: Social and Technical Issues, edited by Marina Jirotka and Joseph Goguen (Academic Press, 1994).
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn (Chicago, 1962).
• The Scientific Revolution, Steven Shapin (Chicago, 1996).
• Aramis, or the Love of Technology, Bruno Latour (Harvard, 1996).
• Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer, Michael White (Addison-Wesley, 1998).
• Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts, Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar (Princeton, 1986).
• The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA, Diane Vaughan (Chicago, 1996).
• Consilience, Edward O. Wilson (Vintage, 1998).
• Computation and Human Experience, Philip Agre (Cambridge, 1997).

Grades will be based on the last four items below, especially the last; the extent to which your class participation and your homework reflect your familiarity with the readings will be important in their evaluation.

1. Course notes
2. Reading assignments
3. Homework assignments
4. Class participation
5. a short vocabulary quiz towards the end of the quarter
6. Projects - these are due the last day of (this) class.

• The homepage of Phil Agre at UCLA contains many interesting publications, a good bibliography, and several relevant links.
• More to come here .....