Overview of Course

This is a personally relevant course about information and communication technologies and their effects on individuals and global societies. Related telecommunication technologies such as mobile telephony, social media, e-games, videoconferencing, and virtual/augmented realities will be analyzed in terms of their global social effects. The development and global diffusion of artificial intelligence and its implications for written communication and media creation will be a central area of study.

Assignments in port will include the collection of data and photographs of the local use of communication technologies documented for a personal digital journal due near the end of the voyage¬. Students will debrief in class after each port to share their observations on telecommunication and media in that nation, especially focused on personal mobile phone usage. Students in prior SAS versions of this course have found these sharing sessions to be personally enlightening.