INTERFACE
We meet weekly during the academic year to discuss the impacts and ethics of computing. Topics range from privacy and surveillance issues to education, security to labor policies.
Membership ranges from undergrad and grad students to faculty and alumni. Come if you believe these conversations are important to have.
Summer 2020 meetings are biweekly on Tuesdays at 7pm ET over Zoom.
Count me in
Coming Up
Tuesday 7/14: A Quick Visit to the Wireless World with Software Defined Radio
From satellites and commercial airplanes to restaurant pagers and proxes- they all rely on the same means of communication: radio frequencies. We will use Software Defined Radios to decipher these signals and investigate how private and secure they can be. What can we say about the integrity of our own data permeating through wireless space and is it possible to thwart eavesdropping?
Vinicius Wagner '21
Tuesday 7/28: Topic in Quantitative Finance & Regulation
Details TBA
Andrew Wonnacott '19, Old Mission Capital
Tuesday 8/11: The Digital Divide
Details TBA
A Conversation w/ David Major '20, Oliver Hsu '20
Tuesday 8/25: Health Data & Hospital-Tech Company Relationships
Details TBA
Maia Hamin '20
Past Topics
Tuesday 6/30: Drugs & the Internet: From Counterculture to Modern Computing
What did "turn on, tune in, drop out", the Grateful Dead, and hippie communes have to do with the digital revolution? How was the development of modern computing shaped by the counterculture of the "psychedelic 60s"? How do other manifestations of counterculture continue to shape the internet?
Ahmed Farah '22, Betsy Pu '22
Tuesday 6/16: When Weapons are Speech
What is the state of the art of 3D printed firearms, and what is at stake Constitutionally? How will printed arms change the balance of power between centralization and decentralization?
Robert Liu '20
Tuesday 6/2: The Internet, Intelligence Agencies, and Neo-Fascism
Join us for a discussion on the new faces of fascism, what American and German intelligence agencies are not doing about them, and the related issues of racism in police forces and the justification for mass surveillance.
Sabrina Reguyal '22
Monday 5/18: End-of-Year Celebration
Reflections on how much we've grown! Summer planning! Special graduation ceremony for the seniors <3
Your loving non-seniors
Monday 5/11: Dean's Date Eve
Chill hang & Gear design
Monday 5/4: A Deep Dive Into the Deep Web
The "Deep Web" is the mysterious underbelly of the Internet - but how true are all the stories?
Sandun Bambarandage '20, Maia Hamin '20
Monday 4/27: Data Collection & Processing in Consumer IoT Devices
What sort of data does your wearables and smart home devices gather? What can observers infer from this data, and what happens after it leaves your device?
Hien Pham '23
Monday 4/20: Digital Rights in the Pandemic Age
What technologies are countries using to confront the coronavirus crisis? How should governments and citizens navigate the tradeoffs between public health and individual privacy?
Maia Hamin '20 & Betsy Pu '22
Monday 4/13: AR, VR, & Brain-Machine Interfaces
What are brain-machine interfaces? How are they related to AR/VR? Why should we connect ourselves to computers and what are the ethical implications of doing so?
Theodor Marcu '20
Monday 4/6: Cyber Warfare
Individual cyber criminals steal credit card information. State-sponsored hackers destroy nuclear plants. Join us as we discuss the known cyber capabilities of nations, and what a full-scale cyber war between governments would look like.
Sandun Bambarandage '20
Monday 3/30: Industry's Influence on Academia
How do tech companies influence academic research, education, and student culture? How does this manifest at Princeton?
Prof. Jennifer Rexford
Monday 3/23: Software Ownership & Control
Should companies own fan-made modifications of their software? Should Google allow adblockers in Chrome? Should we all just go open source?
Alec Leng '21
Monday 3/9: Education and Technology
As technology infiltrates classrooms, who’s really benefiting? Do kindergartners learn better on iPads? Is social media presence a useful metric for school admissions? What student data is being collected and sold under our noses?
Ross Teixeira, CITP Doctoral Student
Monday 3/2: Visions of the Future
Will facial recognition create a surveillance dystopia? How soon will we have to bow to our new AI overlords? Is it even possible to answer these questions? Come join us for a conversation on how today's emerging technologies could affect our lives in the years to come (with a little help from science fiction!).
Sandun Bambarandage '20
Monday 2/24: The Ethics of Countering Disinformation
Warning messages can help counter disinformation online, but should we use them? How should we weigh the risks of censorship, false positives, and backfire effects? Facing these risks, what is the right approach for policymaking?
Ben Kaiser, CITP Doctoral Student
Monday 2/17: Issues in Facial Recognition & Surveillance
What are the moral, ethical, and legal implications of applying facial recognition to body cameras and surveillance cameras? (How) should we regulate facial recognition technology in the public and private sphere? How does facial recognition change the nature of protest?
Ayushi Sinha '20
Monday 2/10: Amazon & Anti-Competitive Practice
Is Amazon engaging in anti-competitive behavior? How can/should regulators respond?
Maia Hamin '20, Sabrina Reguyal '22
Monday 2/3: Labor Battles in Big Tech
What are tech workers organizing for? How are companies striking back?
Robert Liu '20