Assignment 2. Essay

Hello, dear friend, you can consult us at any time if you have any questions, add WeChat: daixieit

Assignment 2. Essay

Write one essay of up to 1500 words, in conventional essay format (introduction-body- conclusion), on one of the following topics, or choose your own title in discussion with the course lecturer as described below.

1. Could Charles Babbage's vision of all-mechanical programmable calculating machines have worked?

2. How far do past visions of remote person-to-person video interaction capture the real-world experiences and challenges of the Zoom era?

3. Why did AT&T/s Picturephone fail, judged by its creators' expectations? Are there ways in which it was a success?

4. How and why do speculative visions of artificial intelligence tend to introduce their ideas through the figure of the robot?

5. Popular perceptions of automation and robotics have often been shaped by fears of robot takeovers or mass unemployment. How have the promoters of these technologies worked to overcome these fears?

6. Was the vision of the “thinking machine" important to the real-life development of electronic computers after the Second World War?

7. Do chatbots tell us anything significant about the future, or are they just a promotional gimmick?

8. How have visions of explosive growth in artificial intelligence influenced real-life information technology innovation?

9. How far was the Open University/s success dependent on new information technology possibilities?

10. What did activists in the 1960s and 70s mean when they talked of “bringing computers to the people"? Did they succeed in their aims?

11. Why did the home users of the first mass-produced personal computers typically not connect them to networks?

12. Can there be such a thing as a nationally specific information technology vision?

13. Is it important to understand the original “hacker ethic" to understand computing culture in the 2020s?

14. What were the cyberlibertarians of the 1990s trying to achieve? Why didn/t they succeed?

15. What hopes and fears have grown up around smartphone-enabled mass social media use? How closely do they match the developing reality?

If your interests are not covered by the titles above, you may be able to propose your own essay title relevant to the themes of this course. All self-chosen titles require advance approval from the course lecturer.