Stanford Center for Internet and Society introduction Wed. 10/17

When: Wednesday, October 17, 2012 12:50pm - 2:00pm Stanford Law School - Room 280B 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA 94305 Free and open to the public. RSVP for this Free Event Today | More Info

Come meet CIS and hear about our exciting work and ways to get involved.

You will meet:

Barbara van Schewick - Associate Professor of Law and Helen L. Crocker Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, Director of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Julie Ahrens - Director - Copyright & Fair Use

Jennifer Granick - Director - Civil Liberties

Aleecia McDonald - Resident Fellow - Privacy

Daniel Nazer - Resident Fellow - Copyright & Fair Use

Bryant Walker Smith - Resident Fellow - Autonomous Driving

Favorite Classes at Stanford

Some of the students asked me in class what some of my favorite classes at Stanford were.  I went through all of the classes that I have taken over the past four years and compiled a list along with some justifications.  Check it out, and feel free to spread the word to anyone else who might be interested.

The list is on my blog at http://samking.org/fall-2012/class/my-favorite-classes-at-stanford

What is the Internet?

It was great meeting you all today!  In class, Terry talked about how the internet works.  A few years ago, I took CS144, a class that provides a more in-depth answer to that question, and I wrote up an explanation of what I learned.  If you're interested in learning a slightly more detailed and technical description of how the internet works, check out http://www.stanford.edu/~samking/personal/verbose-2011-02/#_Toc285743698.

Also, if that site looks poorly designed, it's because it is!  The code is even uglier.

I hope that you have a great first week of class!
-Sam

Welcome to CS47n 2012

Welcome!

We're starting a new year of the Stanford freshman seminar, The Internet and the Open Society, and this  note is to welcome the new students, as well as any other onlookers.

I'll be posting to this blog over the quarter with news of interest and discussion, updates, etc. about the course. Students in the course will also be creating blogs on a particular topic of their own choice. These have been a great way for students to explore new topics and share their learning. The blogs you see to the right here are from the 2011 class. Once students choose topics in a couple of weeks, we will replace them with this year's blogs. 

Class starts on Monday September 24 at 3:15 in Thornton 210.  The course website is being updated for this year and you can get a preview at http://hci.stanford.edu/courses/cs047n/
All of the readings will be available on line.


I'm really looking forward to the course.  See you next week!

--t

Recent stuff

Interesting review on Google by Daniel Soar: "It knows"

And while we're on the subject of "it", a recent article about our official class snack,  It's It (or for Aaron, Pop-tarts)

And one on location and privacy from the New York Times,

And one that Anders sent on NSA spying
And one from Jenny on Digital textbooks
--t

Current items

Some items relating to our recent discussions:


On open social network information, The Social Graph is Neither , a blog post by Maciej Ceglowski.


We talked about planned obsolescence of things like toasters.  A great piece on the way all this works is Annie Leonard's Story of Stuff


I mentioned the article about direct brain connection in the Economist, called "Mind goggling" (not googling)


And a current New York Times article by Claire Miller on our friend Larry, 

Privacy in the mall

A new startup called Euclid Elements emerged from stealth mode today to debut its customer-tracking solution for brick-and-mortar merchants it’s calling “Google Analytics for the physical world.” The name is an apt description for the new solution, which employs sensors and wireless technology to track customer behavior...

So what does Euclid actually do? It uses preconfigured in-store sensors plugged directly into switch in the network closet to track the Wi-Fi signals on customers’ smartphones. In doing so, Euclid can map out and analyze customer shopping behavior, including things like foot patterns (the movement in and out and through the store), plus customer loyalty, retention rates, “dwell time,” and even things like “window conversion rates,” which can be thought of as the offline “click-though.” (A window conversion means a customer sees a window display and then decides to enter the store).