CSI 2911  W2012

Professional Practice in Computer Science

Wed. 4-7PM, SITE J0106

Instructor: Dr. Stan Matwin
stan@eecs.uottawa.ca

www.eecs.uottawa.ca/~stan

TAs: Amir Rad aafra071@uottawa.ca, Shuo Wu swu092@uottawa.ca, Omar Badreddin obadr024@uottawa.ca

Office hours TBA

Office SITE5100

Syllabus

the library guide for this course

This course covers topics and issues every software professional MUST know about, but that are not covered in the technical courses. It is a required course in any certified Computer Science curriculum. Some of these issues are:

 

• the impact of computing on everyday life, including privacy and the change in social relations brought about by the web, social networks, and the “always on-line” connectivity;

• how to analyze computer mishaps from an ethical standpoint?

• privacy on the web: basic legal framework for data privacy in Canada; technical material related to data security and privacy; the Google architecture, Google business model, cookies, etc.

• professional ethics, responsibility and liability, particularly in the Canadian context

• modern technologies and dissemination of intellectual property; the Google books controversy; the open source movement,

• social ramifications of the internet: politics of search engines, the web as a vehicle for political activism, esp. in non-democratic contexts; the digital divide, the mobile phone technology

• a peek into the future: robot ethics, potential dangers in unchecked technology development, etc.

Course schedule, contents, reading material and slides (pls note: at this point slides are from the 2011 version of this class. They will be updated prior to each class. The pdf files currently available in the last column of the table below are therefore for your general orientation in the course material, rather than the specific and detailed material we will cover:

 

Lecture	Date	topic	contents	textbook	additional reading material	slides
1 and 2	11.1 18.1	Preliminaries. Intro to computer ethics	the course, its position in the curriculum, syllabus,  requirements, textbook etc. new developments in ICT - review computer ethics and its specifics – an approach to ethical analysis of computer-related problem –	ch. 1	Moor paper 1 Bynum excerpt losing $100K paper	.pdf
3	25.1	digital privacy	data privacy: what is privacy in the modern era – challenges –the basic legal  some technical aspects of privacy in the context of modern technologies Internet and mobile technologies and politics	ch. 2	Moor paper 2	pdf Guest Spkr 1 slides pdf Gues Spkr 2 slides pdf
4	1.2	networked public sphere	framework for data privacy in Canada (GUEST speaker - TBC) Electronic voting – today and tomorrow Freedom of speech and the Internet; censorship of the net; Psiphon	ch. 3	ch. 7 from Benkler’s book available on line at:                            www.benkler.org/Benkler_Wealth_Of_Networks.pdf PunchScan e-election: http://www.punchscan.org/ controversy on the use of Twitter during the Iranian student riots in 2010	pdf pdf
5	8.2	codes of professional ethics	CIPS and the CIPS code of ethics  – GUEST TBC Other professional codes	ch. 9 A.2	CIPS code of ethics understanding the CIPS COE	John Bufford's slides
6	15.2	legal responsibility of a software professional	legal aspects of the profession of software developer/software engineer Professional liability GUEST speaker TBC The TERAC-25 case	ch. 8	retrofitted linear accelerators problems	guest spkr's slides pdf
7	29.2	midterm;  Intellectual Property in the networked world	Intellectual Property issues and the new content distribution channels Open Source software Open source publishing	ch. 4	“The Cathedral and the Bazaar” paper	pdf
8	7.3	IP issues cont'd
9	14.3		Search engines: architecture, business, politics		Politics of Search Engines Google Issues Advertising and Search Engines	pdf
10	21.3	new technologies and social relations	Mail/chat/Facebook/twitter influence on how people interact Generational gap Are we more or less connected?		Pew Center study	pdf
11	28.3	work and the new technologies computer crime	GUEST SPEAKER Dr. Kenton White Enterpreneurship and the web the wiki model of work crowdsourcing E-commerce Spam, DRM identity theft Jurisdictional issues	ch. 5 ch. 6	reCaptcha paper	pdf Dr. White's slides
12	4.4	digital divide	Internet in the developing world Convergence of Internet and mobile technologies One Laptop Per Child program	ch. 7.3	survey of the impact of mobile technologies paper on thuse of mobile technology for political dissent	pdf
13	4.4	what might the future bring?	Intelligent machines Robot ethics Potential dangers of new technologies   Course review, final exam review		excerpts from Kurzweil (TBD) Bill Joy’s paper Moor paper 3	pdf

Assignment 1: example of a possible answer

Old midterm with answers

2012 midterm with answers is  here

See Virtual Campus for Assignment 2 marks

Assignment 3 is here
Devoir 3 version française est ici

Additional material:


- Advertising and Search Engines
- Google Library
- Google Issues
- Politics of Search Engines
- Sensors
- Universal Access
- You are exposed


Pour les étudiants bilingues, le matériel additionnel en français se trouve ici Liste de lectures pour CSI2911 ). Ce matériel n'est pas obligatoire, mais je vous encourage à le consulter.