All Courses
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HISTORY 329 003 WN 2016
This nontechnical seminar explores the social, political, and cultural history of computers and computer networks around the world, from the 19th century to the present. We will cover Charles Babbage’s designs for steam-powered, mechanical computers in Victorian England; pre-1950 human “computers” in business, science, and war; how early digital computers cracked the Nazi Enigma cipher during World War II; how the Cold War changed computers, and how computers changed the Cold War in the United States, the Soviet Union, France, and Germany. We’ll look at the 1970s computer-based experiment with socialist economic management in Allende’s Chile, the ways that character encoding standards delayed Internet adoption by speakers of Asian languages, and the role of computers in apartheid South Africa. Finally, we’ll study the story behind the Internet and the World Wide Web. Requirements: weekly reading responses, in-class presentations, take-home midterm exam, take-home final exam OR final paper/project. Open to: juniors and seniors, sophomores by permission. Counts toward Social Science distribution requirement and Science, Technology & Society (STS) minor. Preference to BSI students, History concentrators, and STS minors. Format: readings and discussion, in-class student presentations, mini-lectures, occasional video.
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LAW 861 001 FA 2015
Law and Economics Workshop (LAW 861) This workshop provides participants with an opportunity to learn about cutting-edge research in law and economics. Workshop sessions will feature presentations from leading scholars, followed by discussions of the presented papers. Workshop participants will include not only students enrolled in the course, but also faculty members and students throughout the university with an interest in law and economics. For students enrolled in the class, please check "Files" for a copy of the syllabus, which describes the written and other requirements for the course. Dates, speakers and copies of the papers can be found at: http://www.law.umich.edu/centersandprograms/lawandeconomics/workshops/Pages/workshops.aspx Papers themselves will be posted to Canvas as soon as they are available. If, for some reason, you can't find a paper on Canvas nor at the website address above, you should contact both Jenny Rickard (rickardj@umich.edu) and Brenda Falkowski (bjf@umich.edu) for copies of papers.