Random Ideas Page
January Term Special Topics, Seminars, and Directed Readings...
There's a new J-Term format coming down the pike. J-term will be a time for student proposed, student led research. Directed readings, and seminar format classes. J-term will be great time to look at computer science in a cross-disciplinary way. In other words how is what we do as computer scientists similar to what people in other disciplines are doing?
This page is just a scratch page to record some of my random ideas. I make my brainstorms public in the hope that someone might read them and decide to start up a conversation with me about one of these ideas.
- There is a very interesting book, Linked by Barabasi that looks at networks. Computer networks, social networks, business networks, biological networks, all kinds of networks. How does the study of networks related to pure math? The internet? Peer-to-peer file sharing? AIDS research? Cancer research? This book could be a great starting point for readings in many of these related topics.
- Another interesting book I've run across is Information Theory and Evolution by John Avery. The interesction of Math, Computer Science and biology.
- After hearing the lecture on Cryptology last night, I'm convinced that we could do a fun freshman seminar on cryptology. We could study some of the basic math, some computer algorithms, some of the history of Cryptology -- All the way back to the time of Caesar. Looking at code breaking in World War II would introduce us to one of the giants in the computer field -- Alan Turing.
- There are many areas of ethics, and intellectual property rights that are converging with our colleagues in Art, and Music. I believe that a motivated group of people who want to share files over the internet will always/usually win over policies against doing so. And I think the research required to do that is some of the most interesting research in computer science today. But, that does not mean its ethically right! How do we seek a balance?
- Larry Lessig has written an excellent book called Code that examines a lot of issues around intellectual property and the code that forms the basis of the Internet. It would be really interesting to read this book with some of our colleagues in Political Science. There are other great books that would complement this book for a set of J-Term readings, including My Tiny Life by Julian Dibble and The Transparent Society by one of my favorite science fiction authors, David Brin.
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The best book about debugging ever written? What do this book and other works of literatur have to say to us about Computer Science?
- Artificial Intelligence: I just read reviews of three interesting sounding books that discuss the nature of consciousness. One of these books, and some others would make a great discussion on the nature of artificial intelligence. Perhaps the Asimov robot trilogy, The three laws (maybe four depending on how many of the books we read) of robotics?
- And speaking of AI, that reminds me of the Turing test, which reminds me of Turing. His biography is a great book. Maybe a freshman seminar where we read the biographies of several of our fields luminaries.