CS6604 971202 Lecture: Social, Legal, Economic Issues

PART 1 - Social: Important Changes from Science/Technology, ...

Understanding the West: Beyond the Hundredth Meridian by Wallace Stegner

• about John Wesley Powell
• Major in Civil War, lost one arm
• led first exploration that rode the rapids of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado
• distinguished explorer, scientist, student of Plateau Region of the West, federal administrator - 1860s to 1890s
• areas: anthropology, ethnography, ethnology, geology
• studied native Americans, with 58 linguistic families/stocks, over 500 languages
• Bureau of Ethnology - founder, first director
• Second director of consolidated United States Geological Survey, starting March 12, 1881
• established federal science enterprise on large scale to help organize society
• encouraged re-thinking of
  • humanity and cultures of native Americans
  • geology of West (eventually to plate tectonics)
  • dependency of Western civilization on water
  • legal (laws on watershed, irrigation), commercial (dams, TVA), and community morality / social organization to serve society based on the real situation in the arid regions (not Gilpen's rosy myths)

Aviation: Wilbur & Orville by Fred Howard

• around the turn of the century through WWW I
• gliding, soaring
• wing shape and design, wind tunnel experiments
• experimentation, failure, refinement
• first manned flight - which others argued would not occur for decades
• patents on control
• success based on integration: aerodynamics, materials, motors, propellers
• led to aviation, aeronautics, aerospace engineering
• led to reshaping of civilization: redefining time and distance - leading to travel, worldwide commerce, worldwide cooperation, warfare, rapid spread of disease

Other Social Aspects

• Social Aspects D-Lib Working Group
• UCLA Workshop, Social Aspects of Digital Libraries, Feb. 16-17, 1996 http://www-lis.gseis.ucla.edu/DL/
• Life Cycle http://www-lis.gseis.ucla.edu/DL/UCLA_DL_model.gif

PART 2. Legal and Economic Issues

• Overview of Copyright Laws in the Digital Domain and References
• Pamela Samuelson and pointers based on her pages and recommendations
• Electronic Commerce
• Workshop on Tech. of Terms and Conditions and Final Report to NSF - including Breakout Group Reports
• EC98, International IFIP Working Conference on Distributed Systems for Electronic Commerce, Hamburg, Germany, June 4-5, 1998
• Stanford U. work on electronic commerce

Other References