Introduction: There are two parts to this exam. The first asks you to identify several passages, drawn from the texts we've read and discussed this semester, and the second asks you to write an essay interpreting and integrating ideas and perspectives from several of those texts. The purpose of the exam is to have you : 1) reflect on the entire semester's work; 2)demonstrate your understanding of the texts; and 3) offer your own perspective on some of the many questions and issues we've discussed this semester.

Part I: Identification and Explication (1 hour)

For any five (5) of the quotations given below, identify the author who wrote it, and the text in which it appears. Then briefly explain whether/how it represents or is indicative of particular positions taken or arguments made by the author. Your answer needn't be longer than a paragraph or two, but it should make clear the significance (or insignificance) of the passage by relating it to one or more of the major themes in the text and/or the Unit of the course in which the text was assigned. (A complete list of assigned texts can be found at the end of this exam.)

1. "It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness and into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents and eruptions. It is only when they work by a steady light of their own, that the press, when it is turned upon them, reveals a situation intelligible enough for popular decision."

2. "Concepts of life, death, and identity will lose their present meaning as your mental fragments and those of others are combined, shuffled, and recombined into temporary associations, sometimes large, sometimes small, sometimes long isolated and highly individual, at other times ephemeral, mere ripples on the rapids of civilization's torrent of knowledge."

3. "It is a very subtle question, how far we ought to treasure our life, and how far to risk it. The main point is this: Humanity, in our person, is an object of the highest respect and never to be violated in us."

4. "When people's preferences are a product of excessively limited options, there is a problem from the standpoint of freedom, and we do freedom a grave disservice by insisting on respect for preferences."

5. "Just as the family and its property were replaced by class membership and national territory, so mankind now begins to replace nationally bounded societies, and the earth replaces the limited state territory."

6. "The notion that they will be told how to live their lives from on high is not just repugnant -- as it has been to previous generations -- but foreign."

7. "A matter that becomes clear ceases to concern us. -- What was on the mind of that god who counseled: 'Know thyself!' Did he mean: 'Cease to concern yourself! Become objective!' -- And Socrates? -- And 'scientific men'?"

8. "In fact, a defining characteristic of the present cultural moment is the belief that information can circulate unchanged among different material substrates. It is not for nothing that 'Beam me up, Scotty,' has become a cultural icon for the global information society."

Part II: Essay (2 hours)

Each of the following topics asks you to consider the works of several authors, and to synthesize their perspectives and your own into a persuasive essay. Choose one (1) of the topics, and write an essay that communicates your thoughts as clearly as possible, while drawing on specific examples from the texts we've read this semester to support your arguments and explanations. Please know that none of the topics was designed to elicit a "right" view or response, and your essay will be evaluated based on the quality, coherence and inspiration of your insights and arguments.

1. Persons:

   Whether for the purposes of describing human behavior, analyzing governments and societies, or discussing ethics and morals, each of the authors we've read this semester has taken seriously the idea of the "person". In recent years, however, advances in both biological and computational sciences have provoked interesting questions about what exactly we could and should mean by "person". For example, does the term "person" refer primarily to physical, social, computational, or moral qualities? In an age of advanced neuropharmaceuticals and neuronal prosthetics, when are we justified in claiming someone is or isn't the "same person" he/she was in the past? In an age of cyborgs and intelligent machines, will "person" be applied to certain forms of semi-human or non-human beings, and if so what criteria should we use to determine what/who is a person?

   Choose three (3) of the authors we've read this semester whose works you think have something to say about the nature and future of "persons". In a brief essay that interprets each of their views and presents your own, propose and discuss a theory or definition of persons that you think appropriate, suitable and desirable for the 21st century.

2. Community:

   From the earliest days of the World Wide Web, a number of American writers have been interested in how computer networks might provide opportunities for new and revitalized forms of community. Such an interest is hardly surprising given the penchant for association(s) that has characterized the history of the United States. Indeed, Alexis de Tocqueville was especially fascinated by this habit of ours. In "On the Use Which the Americans Make of Public Associations in Civic Life," the fifth chapter of Democracy in America, he wrote:

   The political associations that exist in the United States are only a single feature in the midst of the immense assemblage of associations in that country. Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools. If it is proposed to inculcate some truth or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form a society. Wherever at the head of some new undertaking you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association. (Democracy in America, Chapter V)

   Many articles and books about the possibilities and perils of virtual community have appeared in the last decade. Yet even hopeful visions of the sorts of communities that networked computers might make possible include serious concerns about the qualities of these new communities as opposed to those of the past. For example, in his well-known 1993 book, The Virtual Community, Howard Rheingold noted:

   Virtual communities could help citizens revitalize democracy, or they could be luring us into an attractively packaged substitute for democratic discourse." (from The Virtual Community, Chapter Ten: "Disinformocracy")

   Choose three (3) of the authors we've read this semester whose works you think relevant to questions of computers and community, and, in a brief essay, discuss their views, as well as your own, concerning the future of communities in the US, both actual and virtual, in a digital age.

3. War

   During the semester (as we discussed computers, intelligence, identity, democracy, media, and ethics) the story that dominated the national news was the "War on Terrorism" and specifically the US's preparations for a war against Iraq. Had we devoted a unit of "Computers and Human Values" to questions of computers and war, we would likely have considered contemporary texts that discuss the role of the computer in the so-called "Revolution in Military Affairs", or RMA -- widely considered a major factor in bringing about the end of the Cold War -- and older texts that (also) present views about the way new technologies transform the meaning and nature of war. For example, we might have read H.G. Wells' remarkable 1914 novel, The World Set Free, which describes a world in which wars and nations are rendered obsolete by the reality of atomic weapons.

   Choose three (3) of the authors we have read this semester, whose ideas you think relevant to a discussion of technology and the future of war(s). In a brief essay, interpret and discuss their views, as well as you own, concerning how we should think about (and/or for what we can reasonably hope concerning) the relationship between the development of technology and the nature of war in and among human societies.

Works Assigned in CS9

• Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition (University of Chicago Press, 1958).
• Cherny, Andrei. The Next Deal: The Fate of Public Life in the Information Age (Basic Books, 2000).
• Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Post-Human (University of Chicago Press, 1999).
• Kant, Immanuel. Lectures on Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2001 [1780]) (selections).
• Lippmann, Walter. Public Opinion (Free Press, 1997 [1922]).
• Moravec, Hans. Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (Harvard University Press, 1988).
• Nietzsche, Freidrich. Beyond Good and Evil, in Walter Kaufmann (trans.), Basic Writings of Nietzsche (The Modern Library, 2000).
• Spinello, Richard A.. Case Studies in Information and Computer Ethics (Prentice Hall, 1996).
• Sunstein, Cass. republic.com (Princeton University Press, 2001).

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