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Tools to Change the World

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.