Slides from first class session of SYMSYS 201 - "ICT, Society, and Democracy" (Todd Davies), Stanford University, September 26, 2017.

1. Some related questions
to start with…
Are computers (and information technology) prosocial?
Good for humanity?
Do we control technology or does it control us?
Is IT the solution to our problem(s)?
Can we escape from technology? Do we have any
choice?

3. Information technology –
major innovations
• writing (4th Millennium BCE)
• postal mail (persia, 2nd/1st Mill. BCE)
• printing press (1430s, Guttenberg)
• telegraph (1830s), Morse code
• telephone (1875, Bell)
• phonographic recordings (1877, Edison)
• radio/wireless communication (1880s-'90s)
• television (1920s)
• electronic computers (1940s)
• satellite communication (early 60s)
• Arpanet/Internet (late 60s, early 70s)
• cell phones (70s and 80s)
• World Wide Web (1991, Berners-Lee)
• social media (early 2000s)

4. A Simplified History of the Web
and the Popular Internet
First generation Worldwide Web (1989/1991 to about
1999/2003): unstructured websites with limited
interactivity
– For a satirical example, see B1FF’s webpage:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041204042147/www.panix.c
om/~clays/biff/
Web 2.0 : more structure, richer interactivity and user
participation
• Examples: Amazon, Blogs, EGroups/YahooGroups,
Wikipedia, Del.icio.us, Myspace, Facebook, Youtube,
Flickr, GoogleMaps, GoogleDocs

5. A Simplified History of the Web
and the Popular Internet (cont.)
Client-Server architecture: Content is stored centrally on
a server and retrieved locally by a client
• Examples: terminal-mainframe, email client-email server,
browser-website
Peer to Peer (P2P): Challenge to the client-server model
- each node or “peer” serves as both client and server
• Examples: USENET*, Napster*, BitTorrent, Skype*, YaCy
Cloud Computing: return to client-server model for richer
Web applications
• Examples: Salesforce, Amazon Web Services, Google
Docs

6. The Social Web
User-generated social content. Social web applications enable site visitors to
submit content that others can access, such as photos, their own profile
data, links to other web- sites, and comments on other users’ content.
Social networking. Users of social web applications join together in online
groups and relationships (e.g. friends), which allow them to see identity-
related information about the people to whom they are connected.
Collaboration. Users engage in conversations, co-creation of content (e.g. on
wikis), collaborative filtering, and collective action.
Cross-platform data sharing. Increasingly, sharing content requires that a
user be able to transfer data across sites, implying that the site on which the
remote content is to be shared can interface correctly with the other site痴
data. When the remote data need to be processed locally, the two sites
must agree on its meaning, which is a defining characteristic of the
semantic Web
from Todd R. Davies and Mike D. Mintz,(2009) "Design Features for the Social Web: The Architecture of Deme”

7. Social Media: The Good
Keeping in touch with friends and family
Sharing experiences with friends and the world
Learning about and meeting new people
Finding people who share your interests
Online environment reflects social structure in our lives,
which may help us
Presenting a more complete view of yourself to the world
than your appearance can convey
Other good effects?

8. Social Media: The Bad
Cyberstalking and predators
Bullying and harassment
Privacy leaks
Past behavior could haunt you later
Perhaps a false, mediated sense of
connection with others
Other bad effects?

9. Social Media: The Mysterious
How do social networks and social media affect...
• how we spend our time?
• the type, quality, and number of relationships we
have?
• the private and public meaning of our relationships?
• how we think about privacy versus openness?
• what we talk about?
• our ability to get together and work for changes in the
world?
• other aspects of our lives?

10. Technology and well-being
• happiness has not increased in U.S. since
1946
• higher inequality, depression, and anxiety
• Amish are happier than most people

11. Robot caregivers

15. Morphing to Match

18. Do we treat
computers like people?

19. Nass findings
on social media
• High “media multitaskers” have more
difficulty focusing than low-MMers (Ophir,
Nass, and Wagner, 2009)
• Result extends to young people more than
adults
• Young people who are heavy users of
social media are poorer at reading faces,
less confident about social interactions

20. Turkle: Social media give us
“moments of more, and
lives of less”

21. What is so
special about “real”?

22. The Snowden Effect
(post 6/2013)

24. Sousveillance: the recording of an
activity by a participant in the
activity typically by way of small
wearable or portable personal
technologies

25. Police Cameras

26. The 2016 Elections
Microtargeted ads
“Fake news”
Fivethirtyeight.com

27. Two paradigms
for software
• Proprietary software
• Copyright, patents
• Copy protection
• EULAs
• “Free software”
• Open source
• “Copyleft”
• Free modification by
users with no warranty

28. 1-Privacy Control
2-Data Portability
3-Creative Control
4-Software Freedom
5-Participatory Design
6-User Self-
Governance
7-Universal Network
Acces
8-Freedom of
Information
9-Net Neutrality
10-Pluralistic Open
Infrastructure
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Aggregate Importance Ratings
10 Main Principles

29. Transhumanism
• Singularity is near? - Kurzweil
• Life extension and immortality – DeGray
• Simulation and virtuality – Lanier and
Bostrom

31. smart