Final Project

For the course final project, you will read and report on a societal computing book of your choice. Here are some recommendations:

• Adam Alter: “Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked”
• Andrew Lih: “The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia”
• Anna Wiener: “Uncanny Valley: A Memoir”
• Ben Tarnoff and Moira Weigel: “Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do–and How They Do It”
• Brian Merchant: “Blood in the Machine”
• Cathy O’Neil: “Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy”
• Chris Miller: “Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology”
• Erik J. Larson: “The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do”
• Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis: “Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust”
• Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher: “The Age of AI: And Our Human Future”
• Jaron Lanier: “You Are Not a Gadget”
• Jennifer Pahlka: “Recoding America”
• John Markoff: “Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand”
• Jonathan Haidt: “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness”
• Kate Crawford: “Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence”
• Lulu Chen: “Influence Empire: The Story of Tencent & China’s Tech Ambition”
• Margaret O’Mara: “The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America”
• Martin Ford: “Rule of the Robots: How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Everything”
• Michael Lewis: “Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon” In stores October 3rd
• Michael Lewis: “The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story”
• Nicholas Carr: “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains”
• Nick Bostrom: “Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies”
• Ruha Benjamin: “Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code”
• Safiya Umoja Noble: “Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism”
• Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang: “An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination”
• Sherry Turkle: “Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other”
• Shoshana Zuboff: “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power”
• Steven Levy: “Facebook: The Inside Story”
• Steven Levy: “In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives”
• Walter Isaacson: “The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution”
• Yuval Noah Harari: “Homo Deus”
• Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing: “The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion”

So multiple students don’t choose the same book, please indicate your preferences using the survey linked from Canvas. I will post book assignments on Canvas a few days later.

Many of these books are available from the library. For those which aren’t, consider using bigwords.com to find the best prices on used copies.

Are books worth your time? See: The Atlantic: The People Who Don’t Read Books

Deliverables

To receive full credit for the final project, you must submit all deliverables on time. See the course schedule for final project deliverable deadlines.

Note: The final project is worth a significant percent of your grade. I recommend planning to complete the deliverables early.

Note: Consider visiting the Writing Center early and often to help develop your writing.

Book Summary

First, read your book. Next, in 400 to 500 words, summarize the author’s main thesis and their major supporting arguments. Include your name, the author’s name, and the title of the book at the top of your submission. Submit as a PDF on Gradescope.

Response Essay

Next, you will write an essay responding to the author’s thesis with your own arguments. For full credit, your essay should:

• Include your name, the author’s name, and the title of the book at the top of your submission
• Summarize the author’s main thesis and their major supporting arguments
• Respond to the author’s thesis with your own arguments
  • Support your arguments using at least six citations to relevant external sources (e.g., news articles, research papers, other books, etc.)
  • If you mostly agree with the author, you can either point out edge-cases where you think the author’s arguments are weakest, or extend the author’s arguments in some way
  • For full-credit, your arguments should be coherent, convincing, and supported by evidence
• Include introductory, body, and concluding paragraphs
• Include a references section using a standard citation format (e.g., MLA)
• Be five to six pages long (not counting references), double-spaced, using one-inch margins and a 12pt standard font (e.g., Times New Roman, Helvetica, etc.)
• Be free of spelling and grammatical errors

Note: I strongly recommend visiting the Writing Center to receive feedback and revise your writing before submitting.

Submit as a PDF on Gradescope, and bring a printed version to class on the due date.

In-Class Writing Assignment

Finally, during your class’s final exam period, you will complete an in-class writing assignment using only your book as a resource. The assignment will involve hand writing a response to a question about your book. The assignment is designed to be easy if you read your book and completed the earlier writing assignments yourself (instead of using ChatGPT!). The details of the assignment will be revealed during the final exam period. You should bring:

• Your book
• A pencil and eraser

Learning Goals

• Develop written communication skills
• Develop research skills
• Develop opinions about societal computing issues