The purpose of this exam is to have you bring together some of your thoughts about the semester's readings, the discussions we've had, and the ideas you've written about in your papers, in the context of an interpretation and analysis of particular questions and themes concerning the personal, social, economic and political consequences of computers/computing.

There are two parts to this exam. The first asks you to identify several passages, each drawn from the texts we've read and discussed. The second part asks you to write an essay based on the essays in at least one section of the Information Society Reader.

This exam is only slightly different than the one I would have given in a 3-hour block, had we been able to schedule something in-class. I would still (and strongly) prefer that you complete Part One is approximately an hour, and the essay in approximately two hours.

The exam is due by noon (EST) on Sunday, February 18th.

Part One: Identification and Explication

For any four (4) of the quotations given below, identify the author and the text in which it appears. Then briefly explain whether/how it represents or is indicative of particular positions taken or arguments made by the author. Your answer needn't be longer than a paragraph or two, but it should make clear the significance of the passage by relating it to one or more of the major themes in the text and/or the course as a whole. You need not repeat the entire quotation in your explication and can refer to it simply by number if you wish.

1. "Cyborgs are even more fallen than most. But that is a cause for hope rather than despair, because giving up the search for the Garden liberates us to build gardens -- no-caps, plural."

2. "This special property of digital computers, that they can mimic any discrete-state machine, is described by saying that they are universal machines. The existence of machines with this property has the important consequence that, considerations of speed apart, it is unnecessary to design various new machines to do various computing processes. They can all be done with one digital computer, suitably programmed for each case. It 'ill be seen that as a consequence of this all digital computers are in a sense equivalent."

3. "In industrial society there are three main types of social problems: recession-induced unemployment, wars resulting from international conflict, and the dictatorships of fascism. The problems of information society will be future shocks caused by the inability of people to respond smoothly to rapid societal transformation, acts of individual and group terrorists such as hijackings, invasions of individual privacy and the crisis of a controlled society."

4. "Chronicling the revolution, that machine-centered history reinforces the hype and with it what one might call the 'impact theory' of the relation of technology and society. There is society strolling along, minding its own business, and, wham!, it gets impacted and is left reeling by a revolutionary technology, which changes everything overnight or in some similarly short time."

5. "Looked at this way, having avoided a future where I might have poisoned, or at least terrified, an entire town in Connecticut, I was rather glad not to have become the food-irradiation heiress. But I couldn't say that."

6. "But now, Shannon gave the word a special technical definition that divorced it from its common-sense usage. In his theory, information is no longer connected with the semantic content of statements."

7. "Few, if any, of IBM's customers clamored for electronic versions of their electrical and electromechanical accounting equipment. Rather, that demand had to be created by devising applications for the computer in the realms of finance, management, and communications. Those applications and the machines needed to implement them meant keeping pace with scientific and technological development, which in turn meant closer and more open ties between industrial research institutions and the rapidly expanding scientific community in the universities and at now permanent government installations. Dependent in turn on the computer industry for funding and for technical support, academic computer science took shape partly in response to corporately defined research needs. From the outset, the careers of computer people show a characteristic pattern of regular and easy movement between campus, industry, and government facilities."

Part Two: Essay

The following essay topics are designed to elicit your thoughts about computing and its consequences. Choose one (1) of the topics, and write an essay that communicates your thoughts as clearly as possible, while drawing on specific examples and/or arguments from the texts you've read in The Information Society Reader. You may of course make reference to other texts as well, though you are not required to do so. Please know that none of the topics has been formulated to elicit a "right" or "correct" view or response, and your essay will be evaluated based on the quality, coherence and inspiration of your insights, arguments, and readings of the texts you discuss.

• Computing and the Future of the Self: The term "self" may bring to mind the ego, individuality, personhood, subjectivity, boundaries and responsibility. This in turn may inspire some thoughts about psychology, biology, politics, and technology. These thoughts can easily lead to questions about whether and to what extent our "self" is something solid or fluid, something rooted in nature or constructed in society. In William J. Mitchell's provocative book, Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City (2004), he writes:

  "Consider, if you will, Me++.

  "I consist of a biological core surrounded by extended, constructed systems of boundaries and networks. These boundary and network structures are topological and functional duals of each other. The boundaries define a space of containers and places (the traditional domain of architecture), while the networks establish a space of links and flows. Walls, fences, and skins divide; paths, pipes, and wires connect." (Me++ (MIT Press, 2004), p. 7)

  Today it is fairly common to find texts by computer scientists, cultural critics and futurologists who claim that computing has (and should) alter our intuitions, senses and certainties concerning the nature, boundary, and value of the Self. Choose at least two (2) of the essays/excerpts from your section of The Information Society Reader and, in a brief essay (e.g. 2-3 pages) that interprets their views and presents your own, discuss the contemporary concept of the Self as a consequence of computing.

• Computing and the Future of Education: Although none of the units of S689 were specifically devoted to education, and only the Scheffler excerpt was written about schooling, any discussion of the relationship between technology and knowledge, politics, or ethics might be thought to have educational consequences. Indeed, technology has regularly played an important role in helping to shape the answers to the question "What is education (for)?" by different societies at different points in their history.

  Today one hears a great deal about the future of education in light of the Internet, the Web, and of course "information society". In their "Introduction" to a special issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Education devoted to computer technology and its educational consequences, the editors wrote:

  "Nothing is predictable as one explores education on the Net. Huge and exciting potentials open up, alongside aspects that occasion alarm or even horror. Minor innovations take on major significance (word processing perhaps, or the listserv) whilst elaborate technological developments begin to look educationally marginal or trivial (is multimedia as important as e-mail or file transfer? how useful is videoconferencing really?). Some intellectual possibilities seem to close down whilst others open up, ... and the more one thinks about the Internet, the less one seems technologically at its mercy, yet the more locked in conflict with the forces in society who seek to control or promote it." (Nigel Blake and Paul Standish, Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol. 34, No. 1, 2000, p. 5)

  Choose at least two (2) of the essays/excerpts from your section of The Information Society Reader and, in a brief essay that interprets their views and presents your own, discuss the future of schooling in a digital age. You may focus on a particular level of schooling (e.g. undergraduate education) or on schooling generally.

• Computing and the Future of the Public, the Private, and the Social: Drawing distinctions between the public and private for the purposes of social, political and legal analysis has been a basic characteristic of Western thought since Antiquity. Yet several of the texts we've discussed during this course suggest that the effects of computing have altered the boundaries between the public and the private, and have changed the nature of the "social".

  Choose at least two (2) of the essays/excerpts from The Information Society Reader that you think speak to these issues and, in a brief essay that interprets their views and presents your own, discuss the consequence of computing for the public/private distinction.

• Computing and the Future of Hope. More than any technology since the printing press, computers seem to have inspired visions about how new technologies can/will transformation the nature of power relations between people, institutions, and nations. As with visions generally, there are optimists who imagine a better future, pessimists who see a darker future, and agnostics who doubt whether the technology is so significant in transforming people, institutions, or nations in the first place.

  In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote that the three questions with which all reason is concerned are:

  1. What can I know?
  2. What ought I to do?
  3. For what may I hope?

  These three questions have informed and perhaps determined the study and practice of Western philosophy ever since Kant. But perhaps less attention has been paid to the third question than to the first two, and it's especially reasonable to consider this third question in light of technology.

  Choose at least two (2) of the essays/excerpts from The Information Society Reader that you think speak to the question of what we can/should hope for as a consequence of computing; and, in a brief essay that interprets their views and presents your own, answer the question: "For what may I hope?"

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  Thanks for all your patience with and hard work for this class.

  Back to the S689 Syllabus

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  © 2007 Roger B. Blumberg