CS 39: Technology, Society, and Power

UC Berkeley, Fall 2023

bCourses Course Slides

Bookmark this homepage: https://eecs.link/cs39

Professor Sarah Chasins

Professor Sarah Chasins

She/Her/Hers

schasins@berkeley.edu

Office Hours: Tu 8:30-9:30am, Soda 727

Professor Lisa Yan

Professor Lisa Yan

She/Her/Hers

yanlisa@berkeley.edu

Office Hours: Th 3:30-5:00pm, Soda 783

Schedule

Remember to update your QQC Journal each week!

While the list of books has been finalized, the reading schedule itself is not final. This is a very new course, and we expect to be adding supporting readings and resources throughout the semester based on our discussions. Please check the schedule one week before the next session to make sure you’re doing the right readings for the upcoming week!

Wed 8/23
01 (in-class) Cathy O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction. 2016.
Introduction, Ch. 1
Wed 8/30
02 (cont.) O’Neil, 2016.
Ch. 2 - 8
Reading Time Survey
Wed 9/6
03 (cont.) O’Neil, 2016.
Ch. 9-10
bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. 1994.
Intro, Ch. 1
Wed 9/13
04 Ruha Benjamin. Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. 2019.
Intro, Ch. 1-2
Wed 9/20
05 (cont.) Benjamin, 2019.
Ch. 3-5
Wed 9/27
06 Evgeny Morozov. To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. 2013.
Ch. 1-3, link
Wed 10/4
07 Assignments; see sidebar.
bCourses
Wed 10/11
08 Ruha Benjamin. Viral Justice: How we grow the world we want. 2022.
Intro, Ch. 1-4
Wed 10/18
09 Caroline Criado-Perez. Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. 2019.
Intro, Chs. 1, 12, 14-16
Afterword/Epilogue
Wed 10/25
10 Virginia Eubanks. Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. 2018.
(Class cancelled; QQC still required)
Intro, Ch. 1-3
Wed 11/1
11 (cont.) Eubanks, 2018.
Ch. 4-5, Conclusion
Wed 11/8
12 Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow. Chokepoint Capitalism. 2022.
Ch. 1-2, 6, 10-11
Wed 11/15
13 (cont.) Giblin and Doctorow, 2022.
Ch. 12-19
Wed 11/22
14 Thanksgiving break (no class)
Wed 11/29
15 David Graber. Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. 2018.
all, with a focus on Preface, Ch. 1, 4, 6, 7
Ben Tarnoff. “The making of the tech worker movement.” Logic Mag, 2020.