frs 117 project guidelines

FRS 117: Google and Ye Shall Find???

Fall 2007

Final Paper

Topic description due Monday, November 5, 2007 at 5pm

Verbal progress report between Dec. 6 and Dec. 18, 2007

Paper due Dean's Date: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 at 5pm

Additional information will be added to this document as needed.

Requirement for topic description due Monday, November 5, 2007 at 5pm:

Send me an email containing a paragraph describing your topic. This should include the major questions you will be asking as you research the topic. It should also discuss how you will obtain references for your investigation. If you are proposing an investigation that involves doing experiments, describe those experiments.

Shortly after receiving your topic description, I will arrange to meet with you to discuss your plans.

Choosing a topic:

You choose the topic of your final paper under the following guidelines:
You may choose any theme raised in class, raised by Battelle, or that you come up with from other reading or on your own as long as it fits with the goals of the seminar. Your paper must examine both a technical component and social and/or economic aspects.

Some possible types of paper:

Library research: For your chosen topic, use written (and possibly other media) sources of information on the technical and social/economic aspects of the topic. Develop a deep understanding of the topic, but commensurate with your technical background. You must use several sources of information about the topic. If you use Web sources, you must assess the reliability of each source. Describe your findings and critically analyze these. The topic can be one discussed in class, but your discussion must be substantially deeper than our discussion in class.

Experimental research: Do background reading (technical and social/economic) on a topic. Design and execute experiments to provide further insight on the topic. Your paper would give the background and describe your experiments and findings. The background research for this type of paper need not be in as much depth as for a library research paper; discussion in class may suffice for background if it is a topic we have covered well.

Length: 10-15 double spaced pages in 12 point font.
MUST HAVE REFERENCES, properly cited!

Sample topics:

1) monopoly on information:    How much of a monopoly of information already exists? Is it a problem? Why? How does technology contribute to or ameliorate the formation of a monopoly? What are the legal (e.g. antitrust laws) aspects? What is acceptable to society? Include perspectives from other countries than the United States. We will discuss this topic in class, so your paper must go beyond the references for class and the discussion in class.

2) economics of authorship: How has the Web changed the economics of authorship (i.e. how authors make a living from their intellectual property)? How has it changed the economics of publishing (versus authoring)?     Are there technical methods of protecting intellectual property? Does our legal system now address this issue effectively? If not, how could it address these issues? What is the general view of society regarding these issues? (For example, many many people download music and believe it should not be a copyright issue.)   Include perspectives from other countries than the United States. You may have a strong opinion on this issue, but remember you must examine writings by authoritative sources and analyze them. It is fine to explain your position as part of the paper. We will discuss this topic in class, so your paper must go beyond the references for class and the discussion in class.

3) protection through encryption & digital signatures: One way to use technology to get privacy in communication is by encrypting it. Investigate the technology of encryption and how it can be applied to Web content. Does encryption preclude search? What are the legal, economic, and other social ramifications of using encryption. Ramifications may be different for different applications of encryption; you should be specific about these differences.

4) searching physical items: In Chapter 11, Battelle describes the future of search where one can search for anything, including physical items: Your luggage doesn't appear on the airport carousel? Just Google it! [Battelle, pg 254]. Do we have the technology to do this? To what degree is it already a reality? Do we want this? What is the social debate?

5) "computing in the clouds": "computing in the clouds" is the idea of using computer applications on the Web rather than running them on your own computer. This includes keeping all your files on a service such as that offered by Google and using Web tools provided by the service rather than using Word, Excel etc. running on your desktop or laptop.   What kind of computing resources are required by the service provider? How much communication is needed across the Internet to do this well.? Is there enough bandwidth? Does the "fully loaded" personal computer become archaic? Is this something that would be a cost benefit to an average citizen of the United States?    There is a sizable debate about the cost/benefit analysis in terms of issues such as the ease of sharing documents, reliability, privacy, and security. What is the substance of this debate? Does it change as one thinks about other economically developed nations or about economically developing nations?   "Computing in the clouds" is a big topic. You should probably carve out one piece to research and analyze.

6) comparing search engines: We will do some comparison of search engines in class. Do a more thorough comparison of two (or more) search engines using a set of queries and analytic measures as well as qualitative impressions. If you speak another language fluently, you can do this w/ a foreign search engine (home-grown in another country NOT Google.fr/cn etc.).

7) avant-garde search engines: Research one or more new, avant-garde search engines. Report on the goals, techniques, and quality. This involves reading what the company says about its algorithms and speculating about their methods based on knowledge of general techniques. For example, if a search engine clusters documents, you need to discuss techniques for clustering even if the search engine documentation says nothing about the approach used. The evaluation should include your own experimentation and critiques by experts. A couple of candidates are iBoogie and Clusty, both of which are clustering metasearch engines. We will look at these some in class, so if you choose one or both of them, you must go into more depth than our class coverage.   I encourage you to look for other new search engines to investigate.

8) censorship: Investigate the types of censorship that occur in the use of search engines. These include but are not limited to political censorship, such as that to which Google acquiesced in order to open their Chinese subsidiary, and decency censorship, such as blocking pornography. (Some would argue all censorship is political.) What are the different technical means used? For sophisticated means such as filtering, describe the methods or algorithms used. What are the social issues? What is the current state of this debate in various parts of the world.

9) information access in under-developed regions: For large segments of the world's population, the Internet, and thus the Web, is non-existent or nearly so. What is the state of information access for these people? What technological and social efforts exist and are proposed to improve the situation? What are the repercussions of the lack of access? This topic is very much tied to the topic of education. I suggest choosing one geographic region to study. (I personally know of some of the efforts in rural India.)

NEW!

NEW!

10) shopping as search: Battelle[pg 172] quotes Jan Pedersen of Yahoo as saying "We think of shopping as basically an application of search." Research the new models of marketing and shopping based on Web search (broadly construed, not just via general search engines). What are the results of this shift in the way we shop and the way merchants market their goods? What are the effects on stores, distribution systems, and other aspects of the delivery of physical goods (i.e. things you can't download from the internet)? This is a big topic; you should probably carve out one piece to research and analyze. As always, your paper must go beyond the references for class and the discussion in class. (added 10/25/07)

last revision Fri Dec 7 16:15:35 EST 2007
Copyright 2007, Andrea S. LaPaugh