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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

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can study more than one thing... more than
one topic at Princeton, and in my experience,

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this is something that is easy for students
to do. Many students come with an interest

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in something else besides the one topic that
they want to major in, and one of the ways

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that we recognize that on students'
diplomas is through certificate programs which

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are sort of the equivalent of minoring in
a particular topic.

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Princeton really encourages people to follow
their intellectual interests. I came here

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17 years ago as a pure technology professor,
but I got interested over time in public policy

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and how technology interacted with the decisions
the government and society makes, and the

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people across the University were excited
to see a faculty member taking off in a new

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direction and combining different areas of
study, just as we encourage students to do

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the same thing. A big part of what Princeton
is about is drawing these connections across

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traditional disciplines. Students are often
interested in whether they can focus on computer

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science or information technology and issues
of public policy or sociology or economics

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at the same time, and we have a growing number
of students who do that. That's one of the

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reasons we set up the Program in Information
Technology and Society. An example would be

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a student who wants to understand how technology
can enable economic development and a better

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life for people in the developing world in
Africa or elsewhere. So that student has

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the opportunity to take technology classes,
they have the opportunity to take classes

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in economics and sociology and public policy
all around these issues and then to do independent

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work in a senior thesis that really draws
it all together.

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I think the intersection between computer
science and society is a fascinating area

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to work in and touches all kinds of it important
things that go on in our lives. We study electronic

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voting in elections. We study intellectual
property, which accounts for a bigger and

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bigger fraction of the economy and a lot of
the devices and products that we deal with

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everyday. We deal with things like the safety
of cars and the stability of technologies

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that underlie the banking system. We deal
with issues of national security and the balance

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of power around the world. We deal with economic
development in the developing world. All of

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this is connected to information technology these days.

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One of the early studies we did on electronic
voting was to really take apart an electronic

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voting machine that was, at the time, used
by about 10 percent of U.S. voters, and we

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found that it was in fact possible to steal an election

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in a way that wouldn't be discovered, and
we demonstrated it in many places. I demonstrated

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it for Congress. We demonstrated on CNN and
Fox News. And this has led to some changes

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in the way elections are held in a bunch of
states including California, Ohio and Florida.

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One of the problems with electronic voting
machines is the worry that someone is going to

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program them to do something other than count
the votes correctly. This is a Sequoia AVC-Edge

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voting machine, which would normally
be used in election in the United States,

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but some of our students built a version of
Pac-Man to run on this voting machine

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I've been teaching about computer technology
and public policy here at Princeton

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for quite awhile, but now I have the opportunity
to put this into

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practice. I've been appointed as the chief
technologist at the Federal Trade Commission

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in Washington, and so I'm going to go off
and do that for awhile. When I come back afterward,

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I'll be able to teach this material in, I
think, a different way -- I can see that already

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-- 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.