We have eight in-class presentations that students will prepare individually or in pairs.
Each student is required to sign up for two presentations.
Presentations can involve powerpoints or other media if students feel they would be effective,
but may simply be an oral presentation. The presentations should be designed to take ten
minutes. There will be a brief Q and A after each presentation.
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2.
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5.
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8.
Week 5A 2:00pm Contemporary Reactions to New Media
Week 5B 2:10pm Who Owns the Spectrum
Week 7 2:00pm Larry Page Had an Idea
Week 8 2:00pm Women in Computing
Week 9 2:00pm Bill Drops Out of Harvard
Week 10 2:00pm The Internet Was an Accident
Week 11 2:00pm The Internet of Things
Week 122:00pm The Great Firewall of China
Student Presentation #1 Week 5 Oct 13 timeslot A 2:00pm Tuesday
Contemporary Reactions to New Media: The Case of the Telephone and the Radio
Drawing on historian Daniel Czitrom’s narrative of how American’s
responded to the invention of the telephone and the invention of
radio, compare those cases to contemporary reactions to new media
such as smart phones, especially among older citizens. Czitrom, D. J.
(1982). Media and the American mind. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press.
Student Presentation #2 Week 5 Oct 13 timeslot B 2:15pm Tuesday
Who Owns the Spectrum?
Most folks haven’t given the question any thought. We know that radio and TV stations
broadcast on assigned frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum and that our cell phones use
assigned frequencies that have somehow been arranged by phone companies and that our Wi-Fi
and garage door openers use frequencies that don’t seem to interfere with other spectrum users.
But how does this work? Does somebody pay for spectrum? Who do they pay? How is the
government get involved? Starting sources: Wikipedia on spectrum management and
www.newamerica.org/oti/citizens-guide-to-the-airwaves/
Student Presentation #3 Week 7 Monday Oct 26
Larry Page Had a Good Idea
Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google in a garage of a friend
while they were grad students in computer science at Stanford. It
was based on Larry’s dissertation project – the key idea was a new
idea for finding information on the web called PageRank. As you
probably know, these guys are now gazillionaires and Google is
worth over $100 billion and has 60,000 employees. So one might
surmise that Larry had a pretty good idea. So what was this idea? Why is it particularly
successful as a search algorithm? What does it tell us about how human information seeking
works? Initial sources: PageRank in Wikipedia and
http://google.about.com/od/searchengineoptimization/a/pagerankexplain.htm
Student Presentation #4 Week 8 Monday
Nov 2
Women in Computing
While the percentage of women in
professional and technical fields has been
growing, the trend has reversed in computer
science (and only in computer science.)
Nobody is sure why. Maybe more people should recognize that the first programmer in history
was one Ada Lovelace, a pretty interesting role model. Another role model is Grace Hopper.
Who are these pioneers? Sources: Finding Ada http://findingada.com/about/who-was-ada/ and
http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/hopper.htm
Student Presentation #5 Week 9 Monday Nov 9
Bill Drops Out of Harvard
Bill Gates and his pal Paul Allen were computer hobbyists back in the day
when the only computers were gigantic mainframes. The idea of a personal
computer made no sense. That would be like having your own personal air
craft carrier. Then Bill picked up a copy of the January 1975 issue of
Popular Electronics. He suddenly realized this new chip could change
everything and dropped out of Harvard to start Microsoft. Yep, another
gazillionaire. What did he see that few others saw? Sources: Wallace,
James (1993), Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft
Empire, New York: HarperCollins Publishers
Student Presentation #6 Week 10 Monday Nov 16
The Internet Was an Accident
Well, a very fortunate accident. This notion of accident derives from the fact that the original
purposes of the military packet network had nothing to do with its modern use and nobody for
the first decade of its development had a clue what was ahead. They laugh about that now. How
did this accident happen? Could it have been otherwise? Sources: Abbate, J. (1999). Inventing
the Internet. Cambridge: MIT Press. Edwards, P. N. (2010). Some say the internet shouldn’t have
happened. In W. R. Neuman (Ed.), Media, technology, and society: Theories of media evolution
(pp. 141-160). Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press.
Student Presentation #7 Week 11 Monday Nov 23
The Internet of Things
What the? What could an “Internet of things” possibly be? Well, it is basically an idea rather
than a thing. It is an idea at the core of ubiquitous computing. The end point of Moore’s Law.
This presentation will explain why it is so important and more than a little controversial. Source:
Howard, P. N. (2015). Pax technica: How the internet of things may set us free or lock us up.
New Haven: Yale University Press.
Student Presentation #8 Week 12 Monday Nov 30
The Great Firewall of China
The final student presentation reviews the decision by Chinese
authorities that in order to compete in a global marketplace
economically they needed to let their citizens communicate with
each other and the world via the Internet. But China is not an open
society known for its protection of free speech. How have the
Chinese tried to control what people can and cannot say in such an
open two-way network? Source: Wikipedia “Internet censorship in
China” and MacKinnon, R. (2012). Consent of the networked: The
worldwide struggle for internet freedom. New York: Basic Books.