ESP Biography

One of the ways the Roman Empire’s influence is still felt today is in the modern versions of the Latin language that the ancient Romans taught the people they conquered all over Europe. Many of these modern versions of Latin were then spread around the world by European colonial powers, especially Spanish, Portuguese, and French, which are spoken by hundreds of millions of people. (English isn’t directly descended from Latin, but Latin has had a complicated influence on English too.) This class is about how one language turns into another and how languages change over time, to the point of incomprehensibility and beyond. We’ll focus on the example of how Latin turned into Spanish and Portuguese and some of the huge number of features of the language that had to change for that to happen. Some of these changes also reveal the difficulties with the idea that learning Latin or Greek is good for your English vocabulary (although it can be…).

All computer users are at risk from attackers who want to spy on them, steal their information, or take over their computers. In fact, a pretty scary percentage of computers on the Internet have already been taken over by somebody else and are being used as "zombies" to send spam or do other bad stuff. On the other hand, most people aren't being targeted directly for their on-line activities. But what about those who are? I've worked on "Surveillance Self-Defense" projects and on teaching computer security to journalists and activists who do have important secrets to keep, and reason to think someone is watching. In this class we'll take an abbreviated look at some of the surveillance techniques that are used for computer espionage, discuss why computer security is so hard to get right, and learn a few of the most practical means of self-defense against electronic surveillance.

This class will give a brief overview of some of the laws that apply to Internet users and Internet companies, especially focusing on copyright (and takedown notices), privacy, and free speech. If we have time, we can also talk about some of the current controversies in Internet law (there are always lots of them!). Unfortunately, we won't have time for an in-class debate, but I'll suggest some further reading for students who want to learn more about these controversies. (Even though I work with lawyers, I'm not a lawyer and I'm not allowed to give you practical advice about your specific personal situation, like whether something you want to do is legal or not, or if you can sue someone for something they did to you on the Internet.)

"Learn Toki Pona Quickly!" Toki Pona, which means "Good Language" or "Simple Language", is an invented language made up by a Canadian translator named Sonja Elen Kisa. She created Toki Pona to explore her philosophy of simplicity. It has only about 120 words, but it's amazingly possible to talk about lots of things in Toki Pona, by combining words in inventive ways (for example, using the words for fight-person, love-male, cold-box. bird-parent-ball, air-travel-tool to mean 'soldier', 'boyfriend', 'refrigerator', 'egg', and 'airplane'). However, it's definitely less precise than other languages you might be used to. Toki Pona is one of a huge number of usable spoken languages that have been made up by somebody (in fact, there's a whole class at Splash! about those languages and the process of inventing a language: L1126, From Sindarin to Klingon to Na'vi and beyond: the Art of Invented Languages). Toki Pona is probably the second most widely spoken language made up from scratch by a single person who's still alive today. (The first is Klingon.) Because Toki Pona is so simple and the vocabulary is so small, we can learn a lot of it in a short time and try to have some conversations or translate things.

One of the ways the Roman Empire's influence is still felt today is in the modern versions of the Latin language that the ancient Romans taught the people they conquered all over Europe. Many of these modern versions of Latin were then spread around the world by European colonial powers, especially Spanish, Portuguese, and French, which are spoken by hundreds of millions of people. (English isn't directly descended from Latin, but Latin has had a complicated influence on English too.) This class is about how one language turns into another and how languages change over time, to the point of incomprehensibility and beyond. We'll focus on the example of how Latin turned into Spanish and Portuguese and some of the huge number of features of the language that had to change for that to happen. Some of these changes also reveal the difficulties with the idea that learning Latin or Greek is good for your English vocabulary (although it can be...).