Syllabus (Preliminary)
The main text for the course is my Future Imperfect, available on the web and as a published book. Chapter references refer to it. Lee Silver's Remaking Eden provides information for one topic. There will also be additional readings.
1/11: How to think about legal issues raised by new technologies. Chapters I, II
How technologies of surveilance, interception, etc. reduce the possibility of privacy, how encryption and related technologies increase it.
1/18 "Strong
Privacy" [networking, encryption]
Chapter III,
Wikileaks, Chapter IV
1/25: The Transparent Society ch 1-3 [surveillance tech and its implications; one chapter is webbed, the book is on reserve.] Chapter V.
2/1: ECash Chapter VI, Contracts in Cyberspace Chapter VII , From China to Cyberspace
2/8: Open Source
Software,
Virtual firms and gift
economies: Chapter IX
The
Cathedral and the Bazaar, Homesteading
the Noosphere,
How
to
Destroy
the Publishing Industry
2/15: Technological protection Chapter
VIII, Social Networks and
Political Change
2/20: President's day--class shifted to the 21st
2/22: Making Trouble Online: The Caltech (fake?) harassment case, Cornell case, et. al.
Chapters X, XI, High Tech law Enforcement Chapter XII
Intel
v
Randal
Schwartz (webbed)
Chaos
Club v Microsoft (webbed)
2/29: Human Reproductive
Technology: Chapter
XIII
Remaking Eden by Lee Silver
3/5-3/10: Spring break
3/14: Life Extension and Cryonic Suspension (see
links) Ch XVII
3/21: Other biotech
issues, Ch XV
3/28: Mind drugs: Ch XVI
Important technologies that may (or may not) develop during the first half of the next century.
4/4: Nanotechnology. Ch XVIII
4/11:Artificial Intelligence. The
Age of Spiritual Machines by Kurzweil (prologue and
chapters
2-4, 9), Ch XIX
and Deep VR Ch
XX
4/18: Space Ch XXI
4/23: Ch XXII
Brin, David, The Transparent Society
(selected chapters)
Friedman, David "From
China
to Cyberspace," Journal of Law, Economics, and Policy
Friedman, David, Future
Imperfect.
Kurzweil, Ray The Age of
Spiritual
Machines (selected
chapters)
Silver, Lee M. Remaking Eden : How Genetic Engineering and
Cloning
Will Transform the American Family
[Additional readings may be added]
Drexler, Eric, Engines
of
Creation
Friedman, David "A
World of Strong Privacy," Philosophy
and
Public Policy
L. Lessig, "Reading the Constitution in
Cyberspace."
Macintosh, Kerry, Illegal Beings: Human Clones and
the Law
Manne, Robert, "The
Cypherpunk
Revolutionary"
Maranto, Gina, The Quest for Perfection
Radin, Margaret,
"Market-Inalienability",
100 Harv.
L.Rev. 1849 (1987)
Silver, Lee M. and Susan Remis Silver,
"Confused Heritage and the
Absurdity of Genetic "Ownership"," Harvard Journal of Law
and
Technology, 11,3 (Summer 1998).
Sterling, Bruce, The
Hacker Crackdown [more
fun
than the others]
"The
Blast
Shack"
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