-= The University of Birmingham - School of Computer Science =-

EE3D3: Essay titles, semester 1, 1996

Write an essay of not more than 2,500 words on one of the following topics. The essay should be placed in the pigeon-hole labelled EE3D3 in the School of Computer Science, lower ground floor Aston Webb building, by 5-00pm on Friday 13th Dec 1996. The essay should be in a loose leaf binder (not a ring binder) with your name and the course code clearly marked. The report should include a front page which will include the title, author, date and a statement that ``This study is entirely the work of .....''. This page should be signed by the author.
  1. The growth of affordable network bandwidth e.g. ISDN is making it easier for people to work from home rather than in the office. Discuss how these new technologies may affect work patterns in the future, and identify advantages and disadvantages that these changes may bring.
  2. "The future of computing will be wearable computers, integrating sensor information from a technologically-enhanced environment." "The future of computing is the network" What is your view of the future of computing? Include in your answer how it will impact society, and whether and why it is a desirable future.
  3. Huge databases collected by large organisations record the minutiae of our everyday lives. Data mining techniques are being used to interrogate these information repositories, building profiles of people. Discuss the pros and cons of this, including any ethical considerations that you consider important.
  4. The US government has determined to establish clipper as a standard for encryption. The encryption used by the clipper chip is secret but it is known that a government agency will hold keys that can be used to decrypt intercepted transmissions (etc). It is also proposed that this will be the only legal method for encrypting transmissions. Describe the issues that are raised by this development and discuss the dangers and advantages that could arise.
  5. What is it about computers that makes it plausible (to some people) to suppose that computers can in principle be programmed to have thoughts, feelings, emotions and other mental states? Discuss the arguments for and against this supposition.
  6. Safety is an important issue in a wide range of computer applications. Describe the issues that arise from a reliance on computer systems and discuss the methods that can be used to improve the quality of systems. You should include, for example, real-time control systems as well as conventional data storage and retrieval systems.
  7. Disaster recovery and planning. Your discussion should include why this is important, what forms of disaster might occur, what steps must be taken to provide for recovery after a disaster and what might happen when the disaster actually occurs.