Textbooks: Spring 2005

Textbooks: Spring 2005 (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Classes start the week after next. I’m teaching the regular full teaching load — four courses — plus an overload. Students are starting to ask what books they should buy. I won’t be able to get the syllabi up online until next week, but I thought I’d post the reading…

Who owns your e-mails?

“He was keeping a journal of sorts to put together for future history,” John Ellsworth told BBC News. “He wanted to make sure that his generation, as well as following generations, have actual words from somebody who was there.” But Mr Ellsworth Snr was shocked when Yahoo! turned down a request to release his dead…

Ethics for the Robot Age

Most people’s expectations of robots are driven by fantasy. These marvelous machines, optimists hope, will follow Moore’s law, doubling in quality every 18 months, and lead to a Jetsonian utopia. Or, as pessimists fear, humanoid bots will reproduce, increase their intelligence, and wipe out humanity. Both visions are wrong. —By Jordan Pollack —Ethics for the…