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The
Internet
Studies
Program
at Brandeis University
The internet provides powerful tools to change how we work, how we play,
how we learn, how we live. Its significance may well rival that of the
printing press and of writing itself, with a timetable that is enormously
accelerated. By supporting rapid and cheap communications it has fostered a
truly global economic system and transformed societies throughout the
world. The program in Internet Studies affords opportunities for
students and faculty members to study the evolution of this revolutionary
technology and its pervasive political, economic, cultural and artistic
ramifications in a multidisciplinary framework. It highlights the
socioeconomic forces that shape the internet and the global response to it
and helps students to frame the information revolution in critical
perspective.
While several universities have already established multidisciplinary
research centers in this field, the Brandeis program is among the
first, if not actually the first, to be available to undergraduate
students. The program's interdisciplinary approach adds an important
"liberal arts" perspective for students whose focus is primarily technical
and supplies the essential technical component for students whose primary
interests lie in the realm of social, humanities and artistic concerns. The
core survey course promotes community on campus by providing a lively
forum for the consideration of timely issues like the digital divide,
online child porn and napster. Current student interest in the internet
itself, in computer science, and in the various departmental offerings
already on the books in this subject area, is high.
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