Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 11:01:38 -0700
From: Neil Malamuth <nmalamut@ucla.edu>
To: steen@commstds.ucla.edu
Subject: fyi

Honors 98 Seminar, Fall term, 2001, Starting October 4, offered through Communication Studies

Christine L. Borgman, Professor & Presidential Chair in Information
Studies

GSE&IS building, room 245, Thursdays, 10-11am (between North Campus Café and the Young Research Library)

Information technology and infrastructure in times of crisis

Computer networks (e.g., the Internet) and telecommunications are part of an infrastructure that underlies the nation's - and the world's - financial, transportation, power, water, emergency services, and communications frameworks.  The vulnerability of that interconnected infrastructure was never more evident than on September 11, 2001.  Yet the information infrastructure also enabled people to locate each other, to maintain contact, and to get information in a time of crisis.

In this seminar we will address questions such as, What is an information infrastructure? What role does information infrastructure play in people's lives? How can information technology be used to improve communications and access to information in times of crisis?  What are the threats to civil liberties (e.g., privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of access to information) associated with technology-based information infrastructures?  How can we advance global communications networks, in light of their use for good and for evil?

Selected readings:

Agre, P. (Sept 15, 2001).  Imagining the next war:  Infrastructural
warfare and the conditions of democracy.
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/war.html

Borgman, C.L.  (2000). The premise and the promise of a global information infrastructure.  First Monday:  Peer-reviewed journal on
the Internet. 
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_8/borgman/index.html

Crilley, K.  (Aug/Sept 2001).  Information warfare:  new
battlefields.  Terrorists, propaganda, and the Internet.  Aslib
Proceedings, 53(7), 250-264.

Electronic Privacy Information Center (Sept 17, 2001).  Special alert
on civil liberties.  http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_8.17.html

Many of the most current sources of information on the topic of this
course are available online.  We will draw heavily from these web
sites:

Red Rock Eater News Service (Prof. Philip Agre, UCLA)
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/rre.html

Electronic Privacy Information Center
http://www.epic.org

(more to be listed