CSCI 102T:: The Socio-Techno Web

In lieu of a final exam, you will complete a final project (which is worth 25% of your overall grade). Details about projects are described below.

For courses without final exams, the latest that written work may be due is Saturday, December 16. Thus your paper/projects are due by noon on December 16th.

There will also be two deadlines in advance of your final submission. The purpose of these deadlines is so that we are both on the same page about your project scope and plan.

•Please submit a 100 word summary of your project topic by 5pm on Tuesday November 21. If you would like to discuss your topic, just let me know! I will be in my office during our normal tutorial meeting slot if you let me know in advance.

• Please submit a list of at least 7 references that you plan to use by 5pm on Friday December 8, along with a brief (1-page) outline of your project.

Your final project will involve both research and analysis. Your document should be equivalent to a 7-9 page paper with reasonable font size, margins, etc, not including your bibliography. Of course, when formatted for the web, the actual length will depend on your CSS, use of images, lists, tables, etc.

For your project topic, you may choose any topic loosely related to ideas covered in this class. For example, you could extend one of our weekly reading topics, or you can pick a new controversial topic that we did not cover that addresses the societal implications of web technologies. Your project should:

Choose a topic that interests you and will allow you to more deeply explore the issues covered in class. You should have a minimum of 7 outside sources.

Here are some ideas for final papers/projects. You DO NOT have to choose from this list! This is just a starting point. Pick something that interests you.

RFIDs and privacy: The RFID technology is used to track down shipments of goods, but also customer behavior. Some of the questions your paper could answer are: What are some of the useful uses of RFIDs? What can be intrusive and compromising our privacy? How can our privacy be enhanced through laws and technology? Could RFID technology be used to enhance our privacy?
Jobs: Think of a job that will be greatly affected by automation or the growing Social Web. In other words, this job will either flourish or disappear as technologies continue to evolve. Find articles about people who do this job, find out more about what they do and how they do it, etc. Analyze how exactly the changes will happen.
Crowdsourcing: Investigate the use of Amazon Mechanical Turk for crowdsourcing. Interview people on whether they would do the tasks listed there for the offered amount of money. Try to find out whether the jobs offered there are new types of jobs or jobs that were cut from real people in some industries. Find positive and negative stories. Read chapters from the book "The Big Switch" related to the subject of crowdsourcing as a starting point.
Human Computation: The idea of human computation was introduced by Luis von Ahn, creator of CAPTCHAs, re-CAPTCHAs, ESPs and co-creator of Duolingo. Investigate how and why it works. Why do people spend enormous amounts of time to produce useful work and give it away for free? What are the economics of this development?
Open Source: What is the open source movement? What are some successful open source projects and what makes them successful? What are the economics of open source and how might they challenge or benefit existing markets?
Digital Currencies (BitCoin and Block Chain)