Difference between revisions of "Soctech:Topics"

Latest revision as of 21:35, 1 September 2004

This page is for notes regarding interesting society and technology topics. Ruminate in as much detail as you like. This stuff could be fodder for briefings/white papers, lecture series, conferences, or the beginnings of a syllabus for a survey course.

• intellectual "property"
  • DMCA and related laws
  • effects on:
    • innovation
    • consumer sovereignty/fair use
    • accessibility issues (closely related to fair use
    • security: RIAA threatened to use IP law against Felten for investigating security issues; chilling effects could affect all kinds of security research

• open source development
  • community-run vs. corporate-run models
  • benefits/costs for e.g. developing countries and governments

• outsourcing

• software engineering ethics

• voting machines and verifiability of public software systems

• assistive technologies, e.g. for the dyslexic

• value-sensitive design

• cryptography
  • history of cryptographic control and export in US
  • security, privacy issues

• privacy
  • ubiquitous computing
  • databases: effects as they get progressively larger and more integrated

• spam

• social software (email lists, blogs, wikis)
  • effects of social software on political and other organization
    • note interesting NYT Magazine article; relatively little about software, but mentions MoveOn.org and provides some context

• international law and international networks