University of Wisconsin-Madison

Homework Assignment #10 : Due Wed 11/30 by 5pm

Frontiers and Applications of Computer Science

For this assignment, you will pick some number of Technology-related talks that total about 50 minutes in length (anything above 40 minutes is fine...) and write an essay following the specification below.

Finding Suitable Talks

You must pick talks that involve Technology in some way that you find interesting.

You will see that each Ted talk has a number of Tags associated with it; you can search these tags for topics you would like to learn more about. You can see a list of all the tags used to describe the talks. You will see that there are (approximately!) 369 talks related to Technology! You can pick any talks that have Techology as one of its tags (you can see the Tags associated with each talk at the bottom right of each talk's page.)

When searching for interesting talks, you can start at the main Ted page and order talks by:

    * Newest releases
    * Most languages
    * Most emailed this week
    * Most comments this week
    * Most favorited all-time
    * Rated jaw-dropping
    * ... persuasive
    * ... courageous
    * ... ingenious
    * ... fascinating
    * ... inspiring
    * ... beautiful
    * ... funny
    * ... informative

We encourage you to spend some time browsing the available talks. After watching a few minutes of a talk, you might decide it isn't what you want to learn about after all -- please look for the best talks for you!

For example, some of the talks I've especially enjoyed include the following:

• Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos Photosynth
• How Brain Science will Change Computing
• Robotics
• The Sixth Sense

Again, just be sure you pick talks related to Technology! And, the total time for the talks you watch must be above 40 minutes (e.g., you might find three talks that are each 15 minutes, or four talks that are each 10 minutes, or some combination of talks totalling 40 minutes).

Content of your Essays

For each talk you have selected, you will write a short essay. The total length of all of your essays (combined) should be about two or three single-spaced pages. Your essays must include all of the following points:

1. The title of the talk, the date it was presented, the speaker and their affiliation, the length of the talk, and the tags associated with the talk.
2. A summary of the talk. The length of your summary will of course depend upon the length of the talk. In general, a paragraph for each 5-10 minutes of the talk is reasonable. The summary should recap the points the speaker made in as objective manner as possible (that is, try to refrain from stating your own opinions or reflecting on the implications of this talk since you will address those points in the next paragraphs).
3. The next part of your essay should be more subjective and address all of the following questions:
   • How is the technology presented in the talk different than what is currently available in the mainstream? Can you imagine this technology being widely available or used in the next year? In 5 years? in ten?
   • What are the different uses of this technology? Would you like to use it? How would this technology impact society if it were widely available and used? Would it be beneficial or harmful?
   • Does this talk connect technology to a different field? How?
   • Did you find this talk thought provoking? Did the talk get you to look at technology or computer science in any different way? Would you recommend others see this talk?

Please turn in your work in the HW 10 Dropbox through Learn@UW.