Advanced Topics in Computer Science
Unit 9: Computing and Society
Students connect advanced programming to the human impact of software systems, data, automation, networks, and AI.
Unit Focus
What this unit is really teaching
The unit asks students to reason about power, risk, fairness, privacy, security, and responsibility in computing decisions.
Key Topics
- +Privacy, data collection, consent, and digital footprints
- +Cybersecurity basics, threat models, authentication, and secure design habits
- +Bias, fairness, accessibility, and inclusive software design
- +Artificial intelligence, robotics, automation, and parallel computing impacts
- +Networking, distributed systems, and reliability tradeoffs
- +Ethical case studies and written technical reflection
Practice Work
Implementation and analysis tasks
Student task
Write a computing impact analysis for an AI, robotics, or cybersecurity case study.
Student task
Design a responsible feature proposal that balances users, risks, and technical constraints.
Need support with Unit 9?
Work through the concepts, code, edge cases, and runtime analysis with 1:1 guidance.