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Edward Felten: Hi, I'm Ed Felten. I'm a professor of computer science and public affairs here at Princeton and the
Edward Felten: director of the Center for Information Technology Policy.
Edward Felten: Welcome to the "Conversation With..." series. Many of you would like to know whether you
Edward Felten: can study more than one thing... more than one topic at Princeton, and in my experience,
Edward Felten: this is something that is easy for students to do. Many students come with an interest
Edward Felten: in something else besides the one topic that they want to major in, and one of the ways
Edward Felten: that we recognize that on students' diplomas is through certificate programs which
Edward Felten: are sort of the equivalent of minoring in a particular topic.
Edward Felten: Princeton really encourages people to follow their intellectual interests. I came here
Edward Felten: 17 years ago as a pure technology professor, but I got interested over time in public policy
Edward Felten: and how technology interacted with the decisions the government and society makes, and the
Edward Felten: people across the University were excited to see a faculty member taking off in a new
Edward Felten: direction and combining different areas of study, just as we encourage students to do
Edward Felten: the same thing. A big part of what Princeton is about is drawing these connections across
Edward Felten: traditional disciplines. Students are often interested in whether they can focus on computer
Edward Felten: science or information technology and issues of public policy or sociology or economics
Edward Felten: at the same time, and we have a growing number of students who do that. That's one of the
Edward Felten: reasons we set up the Program in Information Technology and Society. An example would be
Edward Felten: a student who wants to understand how technology can enable economic development and a better
Edward Felten: life for people in the developing world in Africa or elsewhere. So that student has
Edward Felten: the opportunity to take technology classes, they have the opportunity to take classes
Edward Felten: in economics and sociology and public policy all around these issues and then to do independent
Edward Felten: work in a senior thesis that really draws it all together.
Edward Felten: I think the intersection between computer science and society is a fascinating area
Edward Felten: to work in and touches all kinds of it important things that go on in our lives. We study electronic
Edward Felten: voting in elections. We study intellectual property, which accounts for a bigger and
Edward Felten: bigger fraction of the economy and a lot of the devices and products that we deal with
Edward Felten: everyday. We deal with things like the safety of cars and the stability of technologies
Edward Felten: that underlie the banking system. We deal with issues of national security and the balance
Edward Felten: of power around the world. We deal with economic development in the developing world. All of
Edward Felten: this is connected to information technology these days.
Edward Felten: One of the early studies we did on electronic voting was to really take apart an electronic
Edward Felten: voting machine that was, at the time, used by about 10 percent of U.S. voters, and we
Edward Felten: found that it was in fact possible to steal an election
Edward Felten: in a way that wouldn't be discovered, and we demonstrated it in many places. I demonstrated
Edward Felten: it for Congress. We demonstrated on CNN and Fox News. And this has led to some changes
Edward Felten: in the way elections are held in a bunch of states including California, Ohio and Florida.
Edward Felten: One of the problems with electronic voting machines is the worry that someone is going to
Edward Felten: program them to do something other than count the votes correctly. This is a Sequoia AVC-Edge
Edward Felten: voting machine, which would normally be used in election in the United States,
Edward Felten: but some of our students built a version of Pac-Man to run on this voting machine
Edward Felten: I've been teaching about computer technology and public policy here at Princeton
Edward Felten: for quite awhile, but now I have the opportunity to put this into
Edward Felten: practice. I've been appointed as the chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission
Edward Felten: in Washington, and so I'm going to go off and do that for awhile. When I come back afterward,
Edward Felten: I'll be able to teach this material in, I think, a different way -- I can see that already
Edward Felten: -- and with real world examples in the kind of insight that you only get from doing something.
Edward Felten: Thanks for joining me in this installment of "Conversation With...." I hope you join
Edward Felten: me next time when I answered questions submitted on Facebook.