Essay topic

What you need to do

Your first task is to pick an essay topic. Your topic choices are listed below. Most of the topic choices require some further specification (e.g. for the biography paper, you need to pick a person to write about). When you hand in your topic, you must have made the general topic concrete by making such choices.

When you need to do it by

The essay topic is due by Friday, October 5, in lecture.

How you hand it in

You must prepare your work using a word processor (e.g. Word) or a document preparation system (e.g. LaTeX). Hand-written work will not be accepted. You must hand in your concrete essay topic printed, on a single sheet of letter-size paper, to your instructor. You must include your name and recitation section in the upper right-hand corner of the page.

Resources

• UB Library: http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/infotree/resourcesbysubject.asp?subject=Computer+Science
• Risks forum: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks
• Privacy forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy.html
• Politech forum http://www.politechbot.com/
• Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) http://www.eff.org/

Topics

 

 

"History" paper:

Pick a technology, idea or device and write a history of it. Be sure to indicate what its importance was to computing.

 

 

"Biography" paper:

Focus on why this person is remembered and important to the discipline of computing, not where they went to grammar school or how many brothers, sisters, and cousins he/she had. Here is a small list of people who would be considered important to computing history. There are others, so feel free to find someone else and write about them:

• Ada Lovelace
• Grace Hopper
• Jon von Neumann
• Herman Hollerith
• Konrad Zuse
• Alan Turing
• John McCarthy
• Charles Babbage

 

 

"Privacy" paper:

Contact your bank/credit card company and find out what their privacy policy is. Find out such things as: what information do they keep about you, and what information do they communicate with other parties (& who are these other parties?) Write a report on what you found, and whether this makes you feel better or worse about having financial dealings with that institution.

 

 

"Privacy" paper:

Contact a store that uses the electronic signature capture pad for credit card transactions, and find out how they store the signature, what they use it for, etc. Write a report on what you found, and whether this makes you feel better or worse about having financial dealings with that institution.

 

 

"Privacy" paper:

Find out what regulations cover wired phone communications, wireless/cellular communications and Voice over IP (VoIP), esp. relating to privacy (storage of data, eavesdropping, wiretaps). You can do this by researching on-line or contacting telephone companies. Discuss the pros and cons of each type of phone communication, with specific references to the privacy issues.

 

 

"Electronic voting" paper:

Find out what some of the arguments are in favor of electronic voting as well as some of the arguments against electronic voting. Formulate and express your own opinion whether the benefits of electronic voting outweigh the risks. Justify your position.

 

 

"Safety Critical Systems (SCS)" paper:

Research failures in Safety Critical Systems (SCS). Write a report on one such failure that was determined to be due to faulty software controls. Examples of SCSs include:

• fly-by-wire aircraft
• medical devices
• elevators
• electronic controls in cars (e.g. ABS braking)
• nuclear reactor safety
• nuclear weapons safeguards

 

 

"What Decisions Should Computers Make?" paper:

It is the case that computer systems are replacing humans at many tasks. Robots and robotic devices are frequently employed in factories to both make and inspect products from the factory. Most airplanes are flown using the computer's guidance, and frequently flown by the computer itself. Computers also make automated decisions about various processes in commercial businesses. The previous category showcases failures in software systems for various tasks. The question that should enter the mind of any discerning intellectual, is "How far is too far?" What types of decisions do you think computers should never make? Give at least two examples of such decisions and justify your position.

 

 

"Can Computers Think?" paper:

Research the basic goals and status of research in the area of artificial intelligence. Describe briefly either the Turing Test or the Chinese Room Argument and form an opinion about whether a computer passing either test actually possesses intelligence (perhaps a definition of intelligence is a good idea as well). Overall, do you believe computers have the ability to think or at least behave intelligently? Make sure you justify your opinions.

 

 

"Cultural Impact of the Computer" paper:

Discuss what impact the computer has made on the current generation. How will the world be forever changed by the computer? How has society changed because of the growth of the Internet? What will the technology revolution do the worldwide problem of the "haves" and "have nots"? How will your life be different from your parent's because of the computer? How do you suppose you will react to upcoming changes in technology as you graduate from school and perhaps begin to raise a family of your own?

 

 

"Government Law/Regulations" paper:

Research the issues of piracy and copyright as they pertain to the web. How do you feel politicians should handle such issues as electronic downloading of music and films? How can we protect the rights of the artist/creator of the media? How would you feel if the software you wrote/hardware you designed were getting pirated and you were receiving less than 1/2 the royalties you should because of the piracy? How can we hope to regulate this problem?

 

 

"Career" paper:

Think about your career plans. Eventually, you will leave this institution with a degree. Perhaps it will be in computer science/engineering, perhaps in a closely related field (electrical engineering, applied mathematics), or in something totally different (underwater basket weaving). In any case, you're here now and what we'd like you to do is research areas of computer science that you might be interested in working in as well as potential job opportunities that would await if you were interested in that area. For example, here are some areas of computer science/engineering that you might be interested in:

• Networking
• Security
• Operating Systems
• Systems Administration
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Vision
• Machine Learning
• Algorithms/Theory
• Database Management
• Wireless Computing
• Distributed Systems
• Graphics
• Academic Research
• Circuit/Chip Design
• Hardware devices and drivers

And there are many more, jobs that are hybrids of computing with some other discipline that might interest you like bioinformatics of informatics (library/data management).

Pick something that sounds interesting. Find out a little about it, write about the area in a very general sense and then see what type of positions are available to people working in that area and write about those.