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The implications of computing

A case study in trust, privacy, economic efficiency,...?
Blippy.
Algorithms and art forgeries
A report on work at Dartmouth.
Recent stories about copyrights and the digital world.
Public Domain Day 2010, a new French anti-piracy law, the Google Books Agreement from Google's viewpoint, and the Google Books Agreement from the American Library Association's viewpoint.

These are from fall term, 2009.

The SixthSense project.
This shows the kind of imagination about the uses of computing that makes me want to live forever just to see what's coming next.
Progress in electronic voting.
A couple years ago, Carleton was host to Ron Rivest, a Turing Award winner for his work on public key cryptography (he is the R in RSA). One of the talks Ron gave was on the algorithms and protocols associated with electronic voting systems. It appears to me that the Scantegrity system described in the link above is somebody's attempt to implement some of those ideas. If you're interested in this topic, Ron has a very helpful page of voting resources links.
Should software patents be allowed?
How about the patent for Amazon's One-Click? Or Eolas's patent of browser plug-ins?
The first time I heard of devices being controlled by thought was when I read about Brainball.
More recently, there's a game called MindFlex and research on brain-to-brain communication.
EATR, the non-corpse-eating robot.
"We completely understand the public's concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission."
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown's apology to Alan Turing
You can read about Alan Turing at Wikipedia, of course, but if you want the details, this is the biography for you.
The Google Books Settlement from Google's viewpoint and from the American Library Association's viewpoint.
This is a deal with huge long-term implications--utopian or apocalyptic or something in between, depending on who's talking.