Possible Topics for CSE 601 Class Discussion, Papers, and Presentations
You can build on these topics in a variety of ways – specialize one and make it more narrowly focused, or broaden an issue to contain parts of another one. Be clear about what you’re discussing. Is it analysis and alternatives, or it is advocacy? (Revised: January 1, 2008)
Codes of Ethics
· IEEE/CS and ACM Codes of Ethics – compared to other professions, can you be a professional without a code of ethics, and does the code of ethics raise the stature of programmers and other computer professionals?
· Code of Ethics for CSE Department? – Would unethical practices by others diminish you? What about other Departments at OSU – Electrical & Computer Engineering, School of Business MBA Program? What about departments at other schools? Codes of academic misconduct and their enforcement, Should we have a code of ethics for students and faculty in the OSU Department of Computer Science and Engineering?
· Professional Engineers codes of ethics, other professions’ ethical standards
· CISSP and PMP Codes of Ethics
· Do other departments or colleges at OSU have codes of ethics and/or behavior?
Entertainment
· Digital Music – personal music (record, cassette, CD, MP3), music availability, music piracy, copyrights, fair use, music industry vs. individual musicians, digital-satellite-internet radio, pod casting, TV & moving recording, RIAA & MPAA/MPA
· Digital Television – technology advance, bandwidth to existing stations, government mandate for change, concerns about piracy and copying, broadcast flag, subsidies to consumers, differences with other countries’ standards, satellite TV and radio; is resolution the biggest problem with TV?
· Digital Production – digital animation and special effects for movies, digital sound production, digital editing, digital projection in theaters (distribution costs and security
· Computers and Photography – Digital cameras, video cameras, digital image processing
· Digital Pornography – easy availability of pornography over the internet, artificial vs. “real” child pornography, “.xxx” web domain, web-site blockers
· Copyright (and Patent) Protections – CD & DVD copying, encryption of material and its copyright, traditional books and magazines, Google and other attempts at digital libraries, answers to textbook questions, intellectual property, software copyrights and patents, attempts to copy protect CDs (including Sony recently), Digital Rights Management
· Computer Gaming – on-line gaming, stand alone games, violence and first person shooter, gambling
· Games – arcade and table/board games, role of computers in football – BCS
Telephony and Networking
· Telephony and Cell Phones – dialing and phone lines almost anachronisms, consolidation in the phone business (Ohio Bell once again part of AT&T), competition between phone companies and cable companies, phone voice messaging, phone text messaging, e-mail on telephone, personalized ads on a cell phone, digital wire taps, domestic surveillance, 3rd generation cell phones with GPS, 4th generation?, ICE (In Case of Emergency), “dog poop girl”, culture changes
· Long distance commoditization, distribution of services to Asia
· Internet Governance – should US dominate?, network neutrality
· Telephony – cell phones, voice over IP
Embedded Computers
· Computers in Cars – engine control, emission control/management, maintenance information, GPS navigation and tracking, crash avoidance
· Computers in Airplanes – computerized air traffic control (how is it that the major US commercial airline accident was caused by inadequate staffing in the control tower, not by terrorism?), automatic navigation, control of aerodynamic surfaces, in-flight services, super sonic fighters un flyable without computer control
· Computers in Space Exploration – computer control of telescopes, digital reconstruction of images, Java controlled Mars exploration, aging computer programs on the space shuttle, moon missions programmed with punched cards (is that why we haven’t been back?)
· Computers in Warfare – smart bombs, drone (auto-piloted) aircraft, computerized fire control (Navy, Army, and Air Force), deployed sensor arrays, GPS (distorted for non-military use), imaging satellites, (Websites of Mass Distraction)
· Computers in Manufacturing – scheduling, logistics management (“just in time”), quality control, numerically controlled machines, custom manufacturing (jeans customized to your size, but automatically manufactured), robotics
· Computers and Agriculture – potential for deployed sensors, monitoring the food chain
Business and Commerce
· Electronic Commerce – on-line sales, collection of sales tax, electronic tax reporting, federal income tax calculation, replacement of catalogs with web sites, special handling of credit cards on-line, spam, phising, computer viruses, on-line fraud
· Computers Supporting Traditional Commerce – payroll computation, accounting, package tracking with FedEx and UPS, computer aided logistics for shipping and just-in-time store restocking, credit cards, freeway traffic management, potential for prepaid “gift card” fraud, cash registers, bar code scanning, Ohio’s historical role with cash registers and UPC, sales tax computation, point-of-sale services, point-of-sale advertising, on-line stock trading, NYSE becoming computerized, RFID, replacement of catalogs with web sites, on-line reservation systems, airplane (train, bus) scheduling, e-tickets, credit reports, personnel background checks, maps and travel planning, data mining for market analysis, e-mail fraud
· Computers in Business – Sarbanes-Oxley, fraud schemes, spam, time-off tracking, regulation compliance tracking, e-mail and web-site use tracking, contracting and out sourcing, work related visa policies, ethics in business (Roger Blackwell, OSU Professor (convicted)), what is legal responsibility of person backing-up business e-mails?
· Stores – cash registers
· Charge cards
Computers in Government
· Computers in Government – electronic voting (voting machines big business and controversial in Ohio), voting systems in legislatures, information availability (Ohio Legislature and Supreme Court), availability of other public records, faculty lists and salaries, public information on sex offenders, public information on real-estate taxes, federally mandated databases of registered voters, ethics in government (US House Majority Leader, Tom Delay (accused); Governor of Ohio, Bob Taft (convicted) (also ranked as one of the three worst governors by Time magazine Nov, 21, 2005); Brian Hicks (convicted), Ohio State Board of Trustees, and many, many more)
· Elections – electronic voting machines, hacking into voting machines, hacking into transmissions and tallying, public records versus the private ballot,
· Politics – web based fund raising
Computers and Society
· Digital Divide – gap between digital technology “haves” and “have nots”
· Separation or unification
· Is the Internet (and Internet Service Providers) like a common carrier and have to treat customers equally or can particular users be treated specially?
Computers in Religion
· Church web pages, PowerPoint to show the words to hymns on screen during service
· Religion – reconstructing a Dead Sea Scroll from index to character use
· One of motivations for clocks was religious, bell ringing technology was a predessor to punch cards, astronomy was motivated by desire to set the date of Easter
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
· Implications of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence – robots for more than just manufacturing, self guided vehicles, medical prostheses, robotics in surgery
News and Information
· News and Information – traditional news outlets have websites, web only information providers, webzines, BLOGS, Chinese (for example) restrictions on web searching, replacement of libraries, information searching (Google vs. Chemical Abstracts, Lexus/Nexus, On-line College Library Center), web sites promoting unpopular viewpoints, alternate news sources, limited interest publications, reliability of on-line information, traditional “library” research
Teaching and Learning
· Teaching and Learning – calculators and the teaching of arithmetic, calculators in high school algebra, on-line courses (and instructional software for high school & college), instructional software (young children), test preparation software, shift from universities to two-year and technical schools, decline in the number of computer science majors, decline in the percentage of women, 9/11 implications reducing number of foreign graduate students and its eventual impact on US leadership in computing
· $100 computer for wide distribution
· Teaching elementary arithmetic and implications of calculators
· Word processing – decline of cursive, no secretarial pools
· Course materials – web pages and on-line documents like this one
Computers and Health are
· Computers and Health Care – health care privacy, medical records, HIPPA, insurance processing, DNA mapping (ethics of DNA testing), assessing insurance risk based on medical tests, ODJFS
Computers and Privacy
· Computers and Personal Privacy – Patriot Act, domestic surveillance, customer tracking through loyalty cards
Computers and Security
· Computers and Security – Homeland security and computer support, profiling databases and data mining, facial recognition, shipping container contents inspection and tracking, terrorist risk because of societal dependence on computers
· Emergency services – GPS based 911, locating cell phones
Computers and the Environment
· Environmental Impacts of Computers – Pollution caused by computers (manufacturing, disposal)
Microsoft
· Microsoft Dominance – monopolistic practices or just winning through fair competition, Bill Gates (Time Man-of-the-Year 2005), previous dominance by other companies (IBM, AT&T, Standard Oil of Ohio), good and bad examples, how they work with small computer services companies
Open Source
· Open Source Business Model – why does IBM support free and open source software, Open Document Model, volunteers or commercial interests, shrink wrapped licensing?, multi-authorship software
Web 2.0
· Web 2.0, multi-authorship web sites, BLOG (Web Log – We Blog), OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) versus CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service), it gets better as more people use it.
· Meeting people – friendster, myspace
· Dating Services, eHarmony, foreign bride brokerages, adoption agencies
· Encyclopedia – wiki
Advertising
· Advertising – getting people to visit, location based cell phone ads
· Market forecasting with Excel (the oldest become new)
More Ideas
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Research
– librarians replaced by Google
§
Photography
– digital
§
Movies
– production, special effects, distribution, display
§
Maps
– mapquest, GoogleMaps, GPS
§
Accounting
fraud
§
“To
err is human, but it takes a computer to rally foul things up.:
§
music
– MP3, down loading songs
§
digital
TV
§
Internet
& web
§
Taxes
– preparation software, sales tax &check out
§
Medical
insurance
§
Health
care – robotic prostrate surgery
§
Church
web sites, accounting, word processing, PowerPoint in worship services
§
Political
polling and voting prediction
§
Computer
controls in cars
§
Security
– face recognition, profiling, wire tapping, detection
§
Air
traffic control
§
Agriculture
– distriutable sensors
§
War
fighting – network of randomly distributed sensors
§
Computers
and arts – animation, music
§
Computers
in air craft control
§
Computerized
war fighting in general (US tanks)
§
Bar
codes, RFID tags
§
On-line
shoping (replacing catalogs)
§
Administering
standardized test
§
Games
– multi-player, on-line
§
Digital
child pornography
§
On-line
dating services
§
Virtual
reality for training
§
Training
for pilots & tank drivers
§
Truck
driving (re)routing
§
Truck
rerouting for delivery of Fretoes and furnace repairs
§
Electronic
brokerages – energy/Enron, real estate, New York Stock Exchange
§
On-line
gambling
§
Death
– obituary for my mother
§
Medical
research – DNA
§
Computer
storage devices
§
Advances
with CDs & DVDs
§
Publishing
– books (textbooks) and magazines
§
Book
sales
§
Monitoring
the food chain
§
Multiple
contributor web sites – wiki
§
MySpace,
YouTube – old, so what’s new
§ OSU library – access to Safari
§ Iraq War
§ Illegal immigration
§ National security oriented wire tapping
§ 2006 election
§ Ethics issues in Congress
§ Vice President Chainey shoots friend in hunting accident
§
WiFi
squatting - illegal in UK and some states
§
Social
networking - Facebook, Myspace,
LinkedIN
§
Credit
score
§
High
tech soldier
§
Patriot
Act and wire taps and e-mail surveillance
§
Use
of copyrighted content on web pages
§
Ohio
e-voting and open records law
§
H-1B
visas & immigration reform
§
Net
neutrality
§
Cat-6
and higher speed networks
§
WiFi,
wide area (cell phone) networks
§
WiFi
in cities and rural areas