Fall 2025 (36 students) and Spring 2026 (27 students)
A course for health-science and non-technical majors on where computing comes from, who it serves, and how to argue about it.
What it covers
AI ethics; the history of computing; the geopolitics of software; semiconductor manufacturing; human-computer interaction. The aim is not fluency in any of them, but the ability to ask a competent question about all of them.
How the course runs
- Socratic seminars: students research a topic, present a deep dive to a small group, and defend it.
- Digital logic on breadboards, before reasoning about what a model does.
- Every student builds and deploys a personal static website.
- A field visit to university IT infrastructure.
Results
- Overall instructor: 4.9 / 5.0
- Availability and responsiveness: 5.0 / 5.0
- Stimulating interest in the course: 4.9 / 5.0
Recordings
Hosted on Cap. Each link opens the recording there.
Lecture
- The dual nature of AI: promise and peril (34 min)
- The geopolitics of the semiconductor industry (32 min)
- AI and the labor market (23 min)
- Digital addiction (42 min)
Python programming practicum
- Intro to Python, part 1 (47 min)
- Intro to Python, part 2 (49 min)
- Socratic seminar logistics and the functions workshop (44 min)
- Comparison operators, booleans, and conditional logic for health data (22 min)
- Python functions and a BMI calculator (11 min)
- Python fundamentals and a BMI calculator in Colab (44 min)
- Jupyter on Google Colab: cells, variables, widgets (12 min)
- Intro to Jupyter in Colab: setup, execution, grading (5 min)
- Flappy Sebastian (25 min)
Pandas practicum
- Pandas assignment overview (9 min)
Spreadsheet practicum
Website practicum
- Setting up the GitHub Pages site
- Building a one-page site (11 min)
- Practicum two setup (8 min)
- Adding a photo and a footer credit (5 min)
- Fixing a broken image link (1 min)
Materials
Slides
PowerPoint decks, one per class. Each link downloads the PPTX from the release page.
- 00: First class
- 01: What is information, and the evolution of computing
- 02: The information age
- 03: The medium is the message
- 04: Social media and mental health
- 05: Responsible technology usage
- 06: Neural networks
- 07: Retrieval augmented generation
- 08: Image generation
- 09: AI in healthcare
- 10: Digital addiction
- 11: Human-computer interface
- 12: Assistive technology
- 13: International relations of technology
- 14: International trade policy
- 15: Semiconductors and national security
- 16: Internet security
- 17: Cryptography
- 18: Solar energy
- 19: Computing energy usage
- 20: AI and the labor market
- 21: The attention economy
- 22: The tokenized future
- 23: National relations
- 24: Narrative economics
- 25: Psychological foundations of attention
- Practical 2: Creating your own website
- Lecture: Social media regulation
- Special lecture: AI and democracy
- Special lecture: TikTok ban
Notebooks and handouts
- Introduction to Jupyter (notebook)
- Introduction to Python (notebook)
- Flappy Sebastian: games as a first program (notebook)
- Introduction to pandas (notebook, 632 KB)
- Word2Vec demonstration (notebook, 160 KB)
- Addictive software design: survey instrument (PDF, 556 KB)