Syllabus for FRS127 ---9---
FRS 127: Sex, Money and Rock and Roll: Information Technology and Society
Paul DiMaggio David Dobkin
Sociology Department Dean of the Faculty and
Computer Science Department
Princeton University
Fall Semester 2005/2006
The aim of this seminar is to combine the perspectives of computer science and the social sciences to equip students with the expertise necessary to participate in the critical policy debates with which the U.S. and other societies are faced by the rise of the Internet as a major medium of communications and information. Through a combination of readings, discussion, and hands-on activity, you will be encouraged, for each of the policy dilemmas that we confront, to a) identify the values that are at stake; b) clarify your own positions on these values; c) understand the range of technological solutions that constrain or facilitate different policy approaches; and d) understand the social and value implications of different policy prescriptions. What makes this course very different from all but a handful of courses on the Internet offered at universities throughout the world, is that we are committed to providing both kinds of tools one needs to address such questions: the computer science that lies behind the policy issues and the social science required to understand the technology’s human impact.
Assignments, class lists, and other course-related paraphernalia will be available at the course web page, which you can reach through www.frs127.org. To distribute materials, use the class e-list: . You are required to purchase only one book: Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace by Lawrence Lessig. This is available at Micawber Books (at 110-14 Nassau Street, across from the University). (Please note: Ask for this book from behind the counter. It is NOT with the other course books in the basement.) Other readings will be available on line or will be distributed.
Evaluation will be on the basis of: (a) Participation in seminar meetings (attendance is required); (b) timely completion of assignments; and (c) Completion of a research paper of at least 15 pages on a public policy issue related to the Internet. There will be no mid-term or final examination (but we will meet during the exam period to share the results of the research projects).
Session 1 (Sept. 20): Technology in Historical Perspective
Readings to finish before class:
1. Manuel Castells. The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2001. Pp. 9-35: “Lessons from the History of the Internet.”
2. Paul Starr. The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications. Pp. 83-111, “America’s First Information Revolution.”
3. Claude S. Fischer. American Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Pp. 60-85: “Educating the Public” and pp. 175-92: “Becoming Commonplace.”
4. “Ten Years that Changed the World.” Wired Magazine’s recap of the history of the Internet, from Netscape to Wonkette (August 2005). http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/tech.html
5. William Shaw. 2001. “In Helsinki Virtual Village.” Wired 9.03 (March 2001). http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.03/helsinki.html
In class:
Pt. 1: Orientation and introductions
Pt. 2: The history of technology – 3 points and a few examples
Pt. 3: Computers and Internet technology in particular – 3 more points.
Pt. 4: Changing technology: News and Telephones in the 21st Century
Pt. 5: Show Museum of Media History, history of the media through 2014 program: http://www.lightover.com/epic/ols-master.html
Pt. 6: Technologies and human values: What should we ask of the Internet?
Pt. 7: What is inside of a computer box?
Pt. 8: How to set up a blog. Visit http://daviddobkin.blogspot.com and read the entry from September 9.
Paul’s lecture notes on Technology
Notes on the class discussion of values
For next time: Set up blogs and write first entry (on readings for Sept. 27).
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Session 2 (Sept. 27). The Internet, Public Policy, and Social Choice
Readings to finish before classs:
1. Lawrence Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Pp. 1-108.
2. Marcia Smith et al. “Internet: An Overview of Key Technology Policy Issues Affecting its Use and Growth.” (41 pp.) Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress. Updated April 13, 2005. http://www.usembassy.it/pdf/other/98-67.pdf
3. Here are web sites from several organizations that are concerned with public policies that concern or affect the Internet. Browse a few of these sites and note some differences in what different organizations view as the most important issues.
American Civil Liberties Union: http://www.aclu.org/Cyber-Liberties/Cyber-Libertieslist.cfm?c=59
Center for Democracy and Technology: http://www.cdt.org/
Cato Institute: http://www.cato.org/tech/
Electronic Frontier Foundation: http://action.eff.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ADV_homepage
Public Knowledge: http://www.publicknowledge.org/
U.S. Chamber of Commerce. http://www.uschamber.com/issues/index/technology/default
In class:
Pt. 1 -- Discusson of Lessig – How people build values into technology
Pt. 2 -- Policy issues: Introduction to the policy agenda: (Dimaggio's Lecture notes)
Common carriage vs. selectivity (Brand X case)
Is file-sharing inherently illegal? (Grokster Case)
Laws regarding blogging
Pt. 3 – Introduction to code (Dobkin’s Lecture notes)
Pt. 4 – Politics and social choice (Dimaggio's Lecture notes)
Pt. 5 – Discussion of blogging
For next time: Write 2 page prospectus for term project (what question you will answer and what you will do to answer it, with a concrete list of tasks and a schedule for completing them). (Both instructors will be available for meetings throughout the week.) If you aren’t sure what you want to write on, spend some time with collection of policy-related materials (news articles, reports, etc.) available at the course web site. (Put your draft on your blog.)
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Session 3 (Oct. 4 ) : Code – Open and Closed (NB this class will have to be rescheduled)
Readings to finish before class:
1. Eric Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, pp. 1-65 (“The Cathedral and the Bazaar”) and pp. 113-66 (“The Magic Cauldron”). Or read online at:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ and
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/magic-cauldron/
2. Yochai Benkler, “The Battle over the Institutional Ecosystem in the Digital Environment.” Communications of the ACM 44 (2), pp. 84-90 (February 2001).
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=359235&coll=portal&dl=ACM&CFID=1297399&CFTOKEN=49580941#FullTexthttp://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=359235&coll=portal&dl=ACM&CFID=1297399&CFTOKEN=49580941#FullText
3. Visit http://www.scipionus.com/ -- Hurrican Katrina emergency wiki, enables people to pool information by putting pins on a regional map…
4. Daniel Pink, “The Book Starts Here.” Wired 12:3 (March 2005). About Wikipedia.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/wiki.html
Visit the Wikipedia: http://www.wikipedia.org/
5. Julian Dibbell, “We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin.” Wired 12:11 (November 2004) – on Brazil’s embrace of open source. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/linux.html?pg=2&topic=linux&topic_set=
6. “The Power of Us: Mass Collaboration on the Internet is Shaking up Business.” Business Week. (June 20, 2005). http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_25/b3938601.htm
In class:
Pt. 1 – Recap on last week’s meeting and discussion of Raymond and open code reading
Pt. 2 – Technical aspects of open code software development
Pt. 3 – Where and how Internet policy gets made
Pt. 4 – Discussion of term project ideas
For next time:
1. Technology b/log --- Make a log of your use of information and communication technologies during any weekday. Each time you use an information or communication technology (other than your body and voice in f-to-f communication), write down what you did, when and how long you did it, and why you did it. Put the list on your blog.
2. Visit at least three highly interactive web sites (e.g. Facebook, Friendster, moveon.com, match.com, computer gaming networks, E-Bay, Neopets, or websites of your choice) and think about how each one operates – What is the incentive to participate? What mechanisms increase commitment? What, if any, business plan keeps the website going? Be prepared to talk about these in class.
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Session 4: Networks and Network Technologies (Oct. 11)
Readings to finish before class:
1. Mark Buchanan. 2002. Nexus: Small World and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks. (New York: Norton). Pp. 23-60 and 73-89.
2. Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian. 1999. Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy, pp. 3-17.
3. Paul Resnick, Richard Zeckhauser, Ric Friedman and Ko Kuwabara. “Reputation Systems.” Communications of the ACM 43 (December 2000)): 45-48.
4. Howard Rheingold. 2005. “Technologies of Cooperation.” Report to the Institute for the Future. http://www.rheingold.com/cooperation/Technology_of_cooperation.pdf
In class:
Pt. 1. The art and science of networks: small worlds, network externalities, reputation and insurance effects.
Pt. 2. Varieties of physical networks: How the Internet moves information.
Pt. 3. How you manage your networks (discussion of tech logs).
Pt. 4. How design choices influence how technology helps you manage your networks.
Pt. 5. Network effects on the Internet (discussion of networking site visits).
Pt. 6. Presentation of search engine assignment for next week (distribute materials & search terms)
For next time: Web business model exercise. 4. Read business plan/annual report/press reports for your search engine. Be prepared to report in class on the following: Within what universe of web pages does your search engine search and how does it identify those web pages? On what basis does it rank hits? Who owns the company? What is the company’s business strategy? Is it working? For each of three search terms (distributed in seminar last week) report on number of hits and print out the top 20.
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Session 5: The Business of Cyberspace: (Oct. 18)
Readings to finish before class:
Eszter Hargittai. 2000. “Open portals or closed gates? Channeling content on the World Wide Web.” Poetics. 27: 233-253. Download .pdf version from http://www.princeton.edu/~eszter/portals.html
“The Complete Guide to Googlemania.” Various authors. Wired 12: 3 (March 2004). http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.03/google.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=
Gary Wolf, “The Great Library of Amazonia.” Wired December 2003: 216-20.
Josh McHugh, 13:09 (November 2005). “The Supernetwork. Why Yahoo will be the Center of the Million-Channel Universe.” http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.09/yahoo.html?pg=2&topic=yahoo&topic_set=
Ly Fie Sugianto and Sen Sendjaya. “Business Models in the Digital Economy.” 7th International Conference on Global Business and Economic Development. Bangkok, Thailand, 2003.
http://blake.montclair.edu/~cibconf/conference/DATA/Theme7/Australia.pdf
Ju-Yong Ha, Steven Dick and Seung Kwan Ryu. “Broadcast via the Internet: Technology, Market, and the Future.” Trends in Communications 11(2):155-68. http://www.leaonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1207/S15427439TC1102_06
Rodney Rothman. “My Fake Job.” New Yorker, November 27, 2000. Account of life in a NY Internet startup by comedy writer who walked in and announced that he was a project manager from the Chicago office. Life in the fastlane of the Internet boom. (The firm was Luminant. Rothman apparently engaged in some embroidery.) http://www.abdot.net/dle/nyt-nov2000.html
In class:
Pt. 1: A brief history of the Internet bubble, with some web pages from the era (courtesy the Wayback Machine – www.archive.org).
Pt. 2: Aspects of business plans: Intellectual property/DMCA; Disintermediation; Tracking, cookies and privacy; Attracting and keeping eyeballs; Advertising and business plans; common carriage vs. cable convergence; Failed plans: Owning people (AOL) and Pets.com, webvan.com
Pt. 3: What are the values that public policy should seek to nurture in dealing with commercialization of the Web?
Pt. 4: Search engines: In-class demonstration and discussion of results of search-engine/portal research OR discussion of big four business plans…
For next time: Just do the readings and blog on them.
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Session 6: Intellectual Property on the Internet (Oct. 25)
Visit from Clayton Marsh of Princeton University General Counsel’s Office
Readings to finish before class:
Lawrence Lessig, Code, Chapter 10.
Dan Hunter and F. Gregory Lastowka. “Amateur-to-Amateur.”46 William and Mary Law Review 951 (Forthcoming, December 2005). http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601808
Read summary of Digital Millenium Copyright Act provided by the U.S. Copyright Office. www.loc.gov/copyright/legislation/dmca.pdf
You may also want to read or skim the legislation itself, which you can find at:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/t2GPO/http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=105_cong_bills&docid=f:h2281enr.txt.pdf
or at http://anti-dmca.org/index.html, an anti-DMCA site which provides one-stop center for downloading the legislation, court cases about the legislation and related materials. Also see http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/unintended_consequences.php (“Unintended Consequences: 5 Years Under the DMCA” – list of actions and cases).
Atlantic Recording Corporation et al. v. Daniel Peng (U>S. District Ct. for New Jersey, Civil No. 03-1441 (SRC), “Complaint for Direct and Contributory Copyright Infringement” http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/riaa/arcopeng40303njcmp.pdf
John Perry Barlow, “A Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace.” http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html
Edward W. Felton, “Googleocracy in Action,” http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000509.html.
Ben Greenman, “The Mouse that Remixed.” The New Yorker Feb. 9, 2004, p. 24ff. www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?040209ta_talk_greenman
Lauren Gitlin, “Jay-Z Meets the Beatlers: DJ Mixes Two Albums into One Clasic,” Rolling Stone 2/19/04 p. 18 http://www.rollingstone.com/mews/story?id=5937152
Clive Thompson, “The Bittorrent Effect,” Wired 14:1 (January 2005: 151-53, 178-79);
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.01/bittorrent.html?pg=4
Jeff Howe, “The Shadow Internet,” Wired 13: 1 (January 2005: 155-59). Inside film pirating networks. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.01/topsite.html?pg=3
Read Creative Commons license – copyleft (noncommercial version) -- http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Here are two important cases, which you may want to look at at some point.
MGM v. Grokster. The case in which the Supreme Court declared technologies that permit incidental sharing of copyrighted materials liable for damages. http://fairuse.stanford.edu/MGM_v_Grokster.pdf
Eldred v. Ashcroft 537 U.S. 186 (2003). Lessig and a cast of thousands argued that the extent to which Congress had extended copyright was a violation of constitutional principles. The S.C. agreed that Congress was unwise, but didn’t agree that they had violated the Constitution. http://straylight.law.cornell.edu/supct/search/display.html?terms=ashcroft&url=/supct/html/01-618.ZS.html
In class:
Pt. 1: Technical issues – Napster v. KaZaa and beyond – MP3s, protocols, client servers vs. peer to peer, broadband, and technical issues bearing on convergence.
Pt. 2: A brief history of sampling: Dali’s Mona Lisa; William Burroughs and cut-up prose; Warhol and pop art; DJ Cool Herc and refashioning tunes for dancing through sampling and remixes; fan sites; the Death of the Author: Art as Process
Pt. 3: With Clayton Marsh: DMCA – what does it do and does it do the right things? Does it embody the right values? What are its unanticipated consequences (for public goods? for free expression? etc.). Will the Internet turn into cable TV? Would that be a bad thing?
For next time: Prepare final version of research-paper proposal and post on blog.
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Week 7: Digital Divide (Nov. 8)
1. Readings:
Eszter Hargittai, “Informed Web Surfing,” Pp. 257-74 in Society Online: The Internet in Context, ed. Philip N. Howard and Steve Jones (Sage Publications, 2004).
Jan A.G.M. Van Dijk. 2005. The Deepening Divide: Inequality in the Information Society, pp. 181-217 (“Policy Perspectives”).