CSCI 102T

The Socio-Techno Web

Home | Schedule | Labs | CS@Williams

Week 2: Digital Explosion

In this second assignment we will move to the main writer / main responder format.
In addition to roles as a writers/responders, all students will:
• write short, uncollected, ungraded summaries of each section in the texts as described below.

Goals

• Explore more techniques for reading documents
• Understand technical concepts: bits, data, metadata, and "data as a byproduct of computing"
• Be able to identify and clearly articulate positions argued by texts

Readings

Required Readings:

• BITS Chapter 1
• DaG Chapter 1

Optional Readings:

• Student IDs That Track the Students (PDF)
• Text Messages: Digital Lipstick on the Collar (PDF)

Assignment

• If you found partner reading or reading aloud to be helpful, I encourage you to continue to use those techniques. However, this week we will use summarization and recapping:
  • This week's readings are broken into concrete sections. As you complete each section/chapter/unit, write a one or two sentence summary of its main ideas (especially the "koans" sections in BITS). Your summaries will not be collected (but summarizing is part of the main writer's task).
• Writing Prompt: What positions do the authors of each text present about privacy and the ways that data is used? How are the positions of these two chapters similar and how are they different? Which one do you connect with more and why? Justify your choice with quotes or examples from the two texts.


• Ongoing: As you read, please keep a list of questions that come to your mind that you want to revisit as we continue to talk about privacy and data. This list may include things you wish the authors explored in more detail, open questions, confusing passages, vocab, etc.