Freedom and technology focus of programming
The Dartmouth Centers Forum—a consortium of eight campus institutes—will
address the theme of "Freedom and Technology" during the 2006-2007
academic year. The aim, according to David Kotz, director of the Institute for Security
Technology Studies (ISTS), will be to examine the nexus of freedom and
technology and to better understand how humanity and technology may best
interact and coexist.
"I'm looking forward to this program, which helps us connect the
different characteristics of technology and how it affects both personal and
national freedoms," says Kotz, who is also a professor of computer science.
He explains that technology can be liberating, freeing us from physically
hard and time-consuming labor and granting us access to information and
knowledge. On the other hand, technology can also be imprisoning as it can be
used to track our movements, spy on our private lives, and create a dependency
on tools many of us do not understand.
"The Centers Forum is busy planning a series of exciting events that
bring new insight into these opportunities and challenges," says Kotz.
The first event in the series is a lecture on October 19 by Dan Wallach,
associate professor of computer science at Rice University in Houston, Texas,
and the associate director of the National Science Foundation's ACCURATE (A
Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable, and Transparent Elections).
His talk, titled "Electronic Voting: Risks and Research," will cover
the timely topic of managing electronic voting systems in this era of hanging
chads and questionable security, reliability, and accuracy. He will discuss how
research in software engineering, distributed systems, and cryptography can and
should impact the next generation of voting systems.
Information about the time and location of this presentation, in addition to
more information about the Dartmouth Centers Forum, can be found at www.dartmouth.edu/~centersforum.
Dartmouth Centers Forum partners are: Allwin Initiative for
Corporate Citizenship, Tuck School; Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of
Learning; Dickey Center for
International Understanding; Ethics Institute;
Institute for Security Technology Studies; Leslie Center for the
Humanities; Rockefeller Center for Public
Policy and the Social Sciences; and the Tucker Foundation.
By SUSAN KNAPP
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