1. Quinn, Ethics for the Information Age,Chapter 1;  
2. Benkler, Wealth of Networks, Introduction (online here - HTML formatted for easy reading - or here - PDF formated for saving paper when printing) -- you may safely skip the section called "Four Methodological Comments" but do read the section that comes after it.
3. The Case of the Killer Robot (online here)

1. Quinn, Chapter 2, the first six sections, through p. 71; 
2. Excerpts from Kant (with notes);

1. Quinn, Chapter 3, sections 1, 3, 4, and 10 (skip section 2 on spam, or read it if you have time and interest; we'll read the remaining sections (5 through 9) next week);

2. Nicholas Carr,   "The Platform Is the Conversation" (Carr is the author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing To Our Brains. Here he is responding to the news from a few years ago that Facebook ran experiments on the emotional psychology of its users.)

3. Nat Eliason, The Destructive Switch from Search to Social

4. Andrew Sullivan on Internet addiction: I Used To Be a Human Being (I'm putting this last, even though I think it's one of the best, because it is rather long. Maybe you won't have time, but I hope you will.)

1. Richard Stallman, Misinterpreting Copyright—A Series of Errors 

2. Quinn, Chapter 4 -- If you have time and interest, read the whole chapter.  If not read at least: Section 4.2 (pp. 162-169), Section 4.3.4 (pp. 172-175), Section 4.4 (pp. 179-186), Sections 4.8, 4.9, and 4.10 (pp.201-211)

3. links to further (optional) materials on copyright - read some of this if you have time and interest.

Some blame the internet for polarization and misinformation in our society:

1. “The Daily Me" by Cass Sunstein (You can skip the last five pages, i.e., the section called "What isn't the Issue".); (From his book #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media)
2. Sunstein on Group Polarization and Cybercascades

But others blame the traditional media:
3. A very brief summary by journalist Jeffrey Toobin of research by Jochai Benkler and his colleagues : https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/a-new-book-details-the-damage-done-by-the-right-wing-media-in-2016
4. And here is a brief account of their more recent research on how disinformation about mail-in voting was spread.  https://www.cjr.org/analysis/trump-twitter-disinformation-voter-fraud-election.php 
On the other hand:
5. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/05/trump-misleading-videos-youtube/
[Extra optional items:  If you have more time and interest, here is Benkler's research report: https://cyber.harvard.edu/publication/2020/Mail-in-Voter-Fraud-Disinformation-2020
Prefer an hour-long podcast?  Here you go:  https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/podcast-yochai-benkler-on-mass-media-disinformation-campaigns/ ]

Read in this order:

1. Bring Back the Fairness Doctrine: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/29/opinion/misinformation-television-radio.html
   
   
2. Bringing Back the Fairness Doctrine Won't Work:
   https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2021/04/12/fairness-doctrine-fcc-radio-modern-media/ideas/essay/
   
   
3. Chapter 9 "Proposals" from Cass Sunstein’s book #Republic. Sunnstein offers a grab-bag of incremental ideas for change
   
   [Optional: If you like watching and listening to people talk instead of reading, or if you just like to get a better sense of what a writer is like,  here’s a talk that Cass Sunstein gave (virtually) to an audience in Chile last October, going over much the same set of ideas that he wrote about in his book. 
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ay_DJGs_cc&list=UUKSa9-lO2UlFNEvkyW-GpEA  ]
   
   
4. This 2018 article, based on an interview with Jochai Benkler, which begins with his diagnosis of the roots of these problems (ideas we have already encountered in previous readings – though I think the explanations in this article are actually more complete and clear than those in the shorter pieces we read before).  About halfway through, the conversation turns to the question of what to do: Benkler's focus is on how to improve journalistic practices to make it harder for misinformation and propaganda to spread.   http://bostonreview.net/politics/yochai-benkler-deborah-chasman-selling-outrage
   
   
5. Carissa Veliz (Oxford University AI scholar) argues that democracy needs privacy: http://bostonreview.net/science-nature-politics/carissa-veliz-power-privacy
   
   
6. (Optional) If you have time this longer essay by 'Surveillance Capitalism' author Soshana Zuboff works out similar ideas in more detail: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/opinion/sunday/facebook-surveillance-society-technology.html

1. Software designer Tobias van Schneider on design ethics:  "The Art of Being a Hypocrite Designer"
   
   
2. Salkever and Wadwa. "How Design Can Make Tech Products Less Addictive" (Don't neglect to click the button labeled "Story continues" to get the second half of the article.)
   
   
3.  Nicholas Carr (author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing To Our Brains)    "The Platform Is the Conversation"
   Can we imagine a social media platform that is as neutral as a table? A platform designed to enhance users' quality of life and not to enrich the platform owner? A platform that embodies the original vision of the internet championed by writers like Benkler? What would that be like???