CS 293
Social and Ethical Issues in Computing
Spring 2019
Section 003: Wednesdays 9:00–9:50 — Centennial Engineering Center 1032
Section 004: Wednesdays 1:00–1:50 — Dane Smith Hall 232
Dr. Marina Kogan
email: mkogan@unm.edu
Class Schedule
Choose at least three articles to read unless otherwise noted. Readings that are bolded should be included in these three.
1. INTRODUCTION & CLASS GOALS (Jan 16)
2. TECHNOLOGY & POWER (Jan 23)
- Watch: Black Mirror Season 3, episode 1 “Nosedive”, 2016
- “The country where Facebook posts whipped up hate”, BBC, 2018
- “This is what filter bubbles actually look like”, MIT Technology Review, 2018
- “Thanks to Apple’s Influence You’re Not Getting a Rifle Emoji”, Buzzfeed, 2016
- “Google reaches into customers’ homes and bricks their gadgets”, BoingBoing, 2016
- “Has a rampaging AI really killed thousands in Pakistan?” The Guardian, 2016
- “Online Manipulation: All The Ways You’re Currently Being Deceived”, Business2Business, 2015
One-page single-spaced essay on the readings is due in class
3. FREE SPEECH & CENSORSHIP (Jan 30)
- “It’s the (democracy-poisoning) golden age of free speech”, Wired, 2018
- “The secret rules of the Internet”, The Verge, 2016
- “The muzzle grows tighter”, The Economist, 2016.
- “Former Facebook workers: We routinely suppressed conservative news”, Gizmodo, 2016
- “Twitter just implemented its own “right to be forgotten” for politicians’ tweets”, Fortune, 2015
One-page single-spaced essay on the readings is due in class
4. CASE STUDY: TWITTER (Feb 6)
Read all of these:
- “The Follower Factory” By Nicholas Confessore, Gabriel J.X. Dance, Richard Harris and Mark Hansen, NYTimes, 2018
- “When do Twitter block lists start infringing on free speech?” by Matthew Ingram, Fortune, 2015
- “Beware the Blocklists”, Slate, 2015
- “Twitter’s Fucked” by John A De Goes, 2016
- Twitter Abuse Recommendations, Women Action & Media
One-page essay on the readings is due in class
5. INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM & OPEN SOURCE (Feb 13)
- Stallman, R. (1985) The Gnu Manifesto.
- Lawrence Lessig: Laws That Choke Creativity (video)
- Creative Commons: A Shared Culture (video)
- Aaron Schwartz: How We Stopped SOPA (video)
- Aaron Schwartz: Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
- Aaron Schwartz: Code and other Laws of Wikipedia
One-page essay on the readings is due in class
6. PRIVACY & PERSONAL DATA (Feb 20)
- “‘Anonymized’ data really isn’t—and here’s why not”, Ars Technica, 2009
- “Smart Device Breaks Up Domestic Dispute By Calling the Police”, Gizmodo, 2017.
- “‘Digital Kidnapping’ Trend is All Over Social Media”, Bustle, 2015.
- “Facebook Reactions: Belgian police warn citizens not to react to posts on social media”, The Independent, 2016
- “First Response’s Bluetooth pregnancy test is intriguing & a privacy nightmare”, The Verge, 2016
- “Father begs Apple CEO to help unlock his dead 13-year-old son’s iPhone”, Ars Technica, 2016
- “People’s Deepest, Darkest Google Searches Are Being Used Against Them”, The Atlantic, 2015
One-page essay on the readings is due in class
7. SURVEILLANCE & GOVERNMENT (Feb 27)
- “How Antivirus Software Can Be Turned Into a Tool for Spying”, New York Times, 2018
- “Ron Johnson wants Facebook to give account info for Orlando killer Mateen”, Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel, 2016
- “How Reporters Pulled Off the Panama Papers, the Biggest Leak in Whistleblower History”, Wired, 2016
- “Cops are asking Ancestry.com and 23andMe for their customers’ DNA”, Fusion, 2015
One-page essay on the readings is due in class
8. INFORMATION INEQUITY (Mar 6)
- Digital Divide (Wikipedia)
- “Will US net neutrality’s end harm the poor?”, Al Jazeera, 2017
- “Virtual classrooms can be as unequal as real ones”, The Atlantic, 2016
- “Melinda Gates Calls Out Tech Gender Divide in India”, The Wall Street Journal, 2016
One-page essay on the readings is due in class
9. SPRING BREAK (Mar 13)
10. INTERNET RESEARCH ETHICS (Mar 20)
- “Facebook Manipulated User News Feeds To Create Emotional Responses”, Forbes, 2014.
- “We experiment on human beings!”, OKTrends, 2014.
- “OKCupid Study Reveals the Perils of Big Data Science”, Wired, 2016.
- “Hey New Yorkers, your drunken tweets were dissected by machines for science”, Mashable, 2016.
- “How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life”, New York Times, 2015.
One-page essay on the readings is due in class
11. Annual Computer Science Conference (Mar 27)
12. AI & ROBOTS (Apr 3)
- “Imagine discovering that your teaching assistant is really a robot”, Wall Street Journal, 2016
- “From Siri to sexbots: Female AI reinforces a toxic desire for passive, agreeable and easily dominated women”, Salon, 2016
- “3 times humans have sued their robot impostors — and won”, Business Insider, 2016
- “Sony’s Robotic Dogs Are Dying A Slow And Heartbreaking Death”, Gizmodo, 2015
- “Can the presence of a robot affect whether humans behave ethically?”, Tech Republic, 2016
- “Why This Guy’s Scarlett Johansson Robot Raise a Lot of Concerns”, The Mary Sue, 2016
One-page essay on the readings is due in class
13. UNM Annual Symposium on Global, National, and Human Security: Testing Institutions and Alliances (Apr 10)
14. ALGORITHMS & BIAS (Apr 17)
- “Two years later, Google solves ‘racist algorithm’ problem by purging ‘gorilla’ label from image classifier”, Boingboing, 2018
- “Your Favorite Website Might Be Discriminating Against You”, ACLU, 2016.
- “Three black teenagers: Anger as Google image search shows police mugshots”, The Guardian, 2016.
- “A Primer on Non-Binary Gender and Big Data”, MIT Center for Civic Media, 2016.
- “Why Men are Re-Tweeted More Than Women”, The Atlantic, 2015.
- “The age of the algorithm”, 99% Invisible (audio)
One-page essay on the readings is due in class
15. CASE STUDY: PREDICTIVE POLICING (Apr 24)
- Watch: Minority Report (2001 film) (Alternate: “Minority Report” by Philip K. Dick (1965))
- “Did A Bail Reform Algorithm Contribute To This San Francisco Man’s Murder?”, (audio), NPR, 2017
- “A computer program used for bail and sentencing decisions was labeled biased against blacks. It’s actually not that clear.”, The Washington Post, 2017
- “One State’s Bail Reform Exposes the Promise and Pitfalls of Tech-Driven Justice”, Wired, 2017
- “China tries its hand at pre-crime”, Bloomberg Businessweek, 2016
- “Can we predict who will turn to crime? ‘Minority Report’ computers may soon mark out children as ‘likely criminals’”, Daily Mail, 2016
One-page essay on the readings is due in class
16. RESPONSIBILITY (May 1)
- ACM Code of Ethics
- “The Perils of Using Technology to Solve Other People’s Problems” by Ethan Zuckerman, The Atlantic, 2013
- “Radiation Offers New Cures, and Ways to Do Harm” by Walt Bognadich, New York Times, 2010.
- “How an Internet mapping glitch turned a random Kansas farm into a digital hell” by Kashmir Hill, Fusion, 2016
- “Rage-quit: Coder unpublished 17 lines of JavaScript and “broke the Internet” by Sean Gallagher, Ars Technica, 2016
- “Stop Using Google Trends” by Danny Page, on Medium, 2016
- “Rape is Not a Data Problem”, The Atlantic, 2014
- “People are paying $10 for an app where you tap a cactus for luck”, Motherboard, 2015
One-page essay on the readings is due in class
17. FINALS WEEK (May 8)
Final projects due
- Email AND drop off at FEC 2200 (main CS office) before 5PM
Write a high-level script for a Black Mirror episode (or any similar sci-fi show that deals with implications of technology) or a short story:
- The script/story should engage with any of the issues we discussed in class (or other issues related to technology)
- Show complexity of the issue (i.e. trade-offs between privacy & security)
- It is helpful to start your writing process with the issue of interest, which will lead you to the specific technology. Not the other way around.
- At least 3 pages (single-spaced).
- At most 5 pages (excluding the explanatory paragraph below).
- After the script/story, in a separate paragraph, include a brief explanation of which competing values you were trying to highlight (i.e. privacy vs. security).
Optional readings to help you with the final project:
- “Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction”, Near Future Laboratory
- “Maneki Neko” by Bruce Sterling, Lightspeed, 2011
- What Would You Do? Design Fiction and Ethics by Baumer et al., ACM GROUP, 2018
Syllabus Details
Society is continuously challenged by new advances, inventions, and the social and ethical repercussions of technology.
This class explores these issues, from the perspective of technology policy, design, and potential impilications for the lived experiences of the technology users. Throughout the course we will cover privacy, intellectual property, issues of digital divide, algorithmic bias, professional responsibility and codes, online communities, chatbots, and the social and legal impacts of these and other technologies.
Assignments
Every week you will have to turn in a one-page single-spaced written essay. These should be turned in, printed out, each week in class. Based on the weeks reading, please discuss the following:
- What are the multiple competing values or points of view present in the readings (i.e. freedom of speech, censorship, and privacy in the right to be forgotten PBS Idea Chanel video)?
- What are the current social implications of this technology or situation – how is it affecting people now?
- What are the possible future implications – where do you imagine this going and how would it affect our society then?
Expectations
You are expect to attend class, to have completed the assigned readings, and to participate in class discussion. Missing class will result in lower grade. You are expected to be respectful of the opinion of others during discussion. All assignments should be done individually.
Grades
- Attendance – 10%
- Class discussion – 30%
- Short weekly assignments – 40%
- Final project – 20%
Office Hours
Farris Engineering Center, Room 2130
- Monday 11:30AM-1:00PM
- Wednesday 10:00AM-11:30PM
The course materials are largely based on Casey Fiesler’s Ethical and Policy Dimensions of Information, Technology, and New Media course and the course description builds on Patrick Kelly’s earlier iteration of this course.