Project Topics

Project Milestones

1. Research Chart (due 10/07). Each person should complete a Research Chart from the second workshop with at least 10 citations. Citations should include at least two sources from each category discussed in workshop: news, case law, law review articles, and computer science research. You may certainly include more citations, such as those from policy white papers.

You can copy this Google Spreadsheet and use it as a template. The chart should serve to ground your initial understanding of the problem and help you explain it at a societal, technological, and legal level.

For help with research sources, see the customized 6.4590 (past: 6.805 library guide) from EECS Librarian, Phoebe Ayers.

2. Team Plan (due 10/21). Each team should submit 1500-2000 words describing your area of interest within your topic. This should include a 1-page Executive Summary and then an outline of the remaining sections and recommendations. The goal of this paper is to align the parts of your individual plans that you have decided to move forward with as a team.  

Try to address the following questions (in paragraph form, not a list):

• Which open questions or problems do you want to investigate?

• How is technology involved in this policy issue?

• What is the legal status of this technology and/or this problem?

• What policies have been considered or implemented in this area? What existing technologies might it be analogous to?

• Who are the stakeholders?

• In whose voice is the paper being written and what will encourage your audience to take your contributions seriously?

In this milestone, make certain summarize the policy recommendations. Consider a range of interventions: legislative, judicial, regulatory, industry standards, etc. Include a list of references.

3. Team Proposal (due 11/04 due 11/06). This paper is a significant revision and expansion of the material in the Team Plan. Each team should turn in 4000-5000 words proposing (a) an intervention and (b) a research and analysis path for your project. This milestone includes an extended Executive Summary (~750-1000 words) and is organized according to the logical structure of your argument (including introduction, background, and topical sections depending on your area of research/intervention). Your recommendation should be clear and targeted to a specific path of implementation. The recommendation should also have a detailed explanation of how it addresses the problems you have raised in the earlier paper. References list should include 20-30+ sources used in your proposal.

4. Full draft (due 11/18). This draft should contain all of your content and be fully researched! The key requirement at this stage is that you have clearly defined policy recommendations supported by your research. You will revise once more for conceptual issues, effectiveness and appropriateness of discourse, argumentation and organization, and to incorporate staff feedback.

5. Presentation in class.

6. Final Draft (due 12/08): This version is the edited and revised copy of your full draft. It should offer a complete argument for a set of policy conditions. To support those policy conditions, the paper should provide the technical and legal background of the problem and related issues sufficiently to explain and support your chosen recommendations. 10,000-15,000 words.