Contents:

• Overview
• Internet Requirements
• Practice Problems
• Problems to be Submitted
• Extra Credit

Topic: Overview of Computing and Society
Related Reading: Ch. 0
Due: 8pm Tuesday, 5 September 2006
8pm Wednesday, 6 September 2006

You will likely need an Internet connection for completing the assignment as well as submission.

At the end of Chapter 0 of our text, there are thirteen questions regarding social issues. Please select any four of the first twelve questions and write your own thoughts about the issue raised. The length of each answer should be appropriate for the question, however I envision answers in the range of 1/2-page to 1-page for each question.

Note: You are free to use the web as a tool for these problems. Yet you must always cite any source of information that you use on a submitted problem. If found on the web, please give a valid URL for your source. If you are giving a direct quote from that source, you should additionally enclose the statement in quotation marks.

Overall, please type your answers to all of the problems in a single document to be submitted electronically. Please see details about the submission process.

The Pascaline device was not actually the earliest gear-driven calculator. It was designed in 1642 and patented in 1645. An earlier gear-driven calculator, capable of performing addition, was created by someone else earlier that century. Sadly it was destroyed in a fire and the creator died of bubonic plague years before Pascal's device was created. The original went unnoticed until design documents were discovered in 1935!

Who created that earlier device?
Please cite your source of information.

If you find some other earlier device that you feel qualifies as a gear-driven calculator, feel free to discuss it (and again, cite your source of information).