PHIL 2080.02

Instructor Information Course Description and Aims Texts Grading and Other Policies attendance academic dishonesty Taught by Bruce Umbaugh of the Philosophy Department. RL office: Pearson House basement phone: 961-2660 x7826 (office) or 968-7170 (PHIL office) RL office hours: by appointment virtual contact: e-mail or on the Web-conferencing system established for the course IF you are enrolled in the course, please fill out the Course Information Form. Thanks.

Philosophical Problems in Technology An Internet course New information technologies have been hailed as the most important development for humankind since the harnessing of fire and condemned as escapist and alienating. This course seeks the truth about computer-mediated communication, virtual realities, cryptography, and the like. This is an Internet course--students should have full Internet access and be familiar with the use of e-mail and the World Wide Web. Our interaction and conversation will be mediated by e-mail and by a Web-based conferencing system established for the course. (More information on the conferencing system is available from this link.) Requirements include regular participation writing a book review leading discussion and an exam. Our aims include, on one hand, learning about and understanding some problems raised by new technologies and technological change. On the other hand, we hope to learn about and understand pedagogy for some forms of Internet-based learning, as well. The main textbook for the course is Technology and Privacy:The New Landscape, edited by Philip E. Agre and Marc Rotenberg. It is available from the Webster University bookstore in Webster Groves or online, from amazon.com (where it was cheaper new than from Follett used, last time I checked), as well as in good independent or chain bookstores elsewhere. We will also rely on textual materials available on the World Wide Web and others that we furnish one another. Grades will be determined according to the following scheme: 40% regular participation 20% book review 20% leading discussion 20% exam Attendance? Well, we won't meet face to face. We won't even all use the conferencing system at once, in all likelihood. So, there is no attendance requirement in the usual sense. Your active participation in the conferencing system is another matter. You would be foolish to blow it off, since it is so much of what the course is, and because it accounts for 40% of your grade. Further, you are responsible for knowing whatever is announced in the class conference. Engaging other participants intellectually within the conferencing system is each student's paramount obligation in this class. In addition, each student will be expected to review a relevant book, according to instructions that will be posted in the class conference, and lead discussion in a topic devoted to it. Each student will be responsible for researching and leading discussion on a chapter from the Agre and Rotenberg book or another relevant text. Each student will take a final exam that reviews material covered in the course. You are adults, attending a university. I expect you to behave responsibly. Students in this class are expected to do their own work and not to rely on the work of others. Students are welcome to work with one another to understand the material, but any student plagiarizing, cheating on an exam, aiding another student to cheat, or committing any other act of academic dishonesty will be referred for appropriate disciplinary action. Please consult with me if you have questions in this regard, either about your own work or that of another person.