GVPT/SOCY333: Information Technology and Society.
T
/Th 11 - 12:15; EGR 3140Spring 2003
|
E-Journal |
Prof. Warren Phillips
|
||
|
This upper division multidisciplinary course utilizes a research model approach to focus on the influences of information and communication technologies on our society. We will begin with a consideration of the development of communications systems in the latter half of the 20th century, focusing on the Internet and World Wide Web. The profound changes of the information age have a series of social, political, economic, legal, and ethical implications, both positive and negative. For example, the emergence of information technologies has been promoted as a mechanism of empowerment, capable of transforming the individual from a passive recipient of data and knowledge into an active and creative information agent. It has been advocated as having a dramatic democratizing influence, providing each person with unfiltered access to the full menu of information sources and allowing each individual to locate and interact with others who are like-minded and to broadcast her/his own perspective and message to the world. The marketplace of ideas has been rendered wide-open, unlimited, global. Similarly, from her desktop the individual can interact with, become a player in, the economic markets of the world. With the understanding of the tools, applications, and concepts of the IT system and its infrastructure obtained in the first two core courses, students in this class will be prepared to address some of the underlying assumptions of these technologies. We will explore some of the influences on the way we live, work, learn, and relate to each other and to our community. Traditional rules of politics, law, and economics are based upon activities in a physical world with geographic boundaries. We will explore how analogous activities in digital space challenges those traditional rules. | |||