Society and Technology
Semester V · BCA 305 · 3 credits
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chapters done
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The syllabus asks for
- Society, culture and social change
- Does technology drive society? Four views
- A short history of the information revolutions
- The pace of change: Moore's law
- Social impacts of computing
- Seeing the ideas: four information revolutions, the timeline and Moore's law
Key points
- Society, culture and structure change under many forces, technology among them; technology comprises artefacts, knowledge and organisation.
- Determinism, SCOT, co-production and ANT give four lenses; Winner's point is that designs carry politics.
- Information revolutions run from writing and printing to mobile, data and AI; Nepal leapfrogged fixed lines.
- Moore's law (doubling every ~2 years, √2 − 1 = 41.4% per year) explains the rapid fall in cost of computing; it is a trend, with physical limits.
- Social impacts are mixed in every domain; ask who benefits, who pays and who is absent.
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The syllabus asks for
- The Technology Acceptance Model
- Diffusion of innovations
- The S-curve: logistic growth
- The Bass diffusion model
- Barriers and resistance
- Seeing the ideas: adoption in hardware, TAM, adopter categories and the two growth curves
Key points
- TAM: PU and PEOU drive intention; UTAUT adds social influence and facilitating conditions; trust matters in Nepal.
- Cronbach's alpha checks scale reliability; correlated predictors (multicollinearity) limit what a small regression can tell.
- Rogers' categories come from the normal curve (2.5, 13.5, 34, 34, 16%); the five attributes of innovations predict speed.
- The logistic curve peaks in rate at t₀; the Bass model combines innovation (p) and imitation (q) with peak time ln(q/p)/(p+q).
- Barriers are individual, organisational, technical, social and policy-related; respect and participation lower resistance.
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The syllabus asks for
- What is the digital divide?
- Measuring the divide
- Language, script and content
- The Digital Nepal Framework
- Closing the divide
- Seeing the ideas: the infrastructure, the three levels, the Lorenz curve and the index
Key points
- The divide has three levels (access, skills, outcomes) and many dimensions: geography, income, gender, age, disability, language and caste.
- Gaps, ratios, the gender parity index, Lorenz/Gini and min-max composite indices measure it; the unit of analysis and the method must be stated.
- Unicode, Nepali-language tools and local content are conditions for benefit, not extras.
- The Digital Nepal Framework (2019) has eight sectors: Digital Foundation, Agriculture, Health, Education, Energy, Tourism, Finance and Urban Infrastructure.
- Closing the divide needs infrastructure, affordability, skills, local content, inclusive design and trust, and assisted channels.
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The syllabus asks for
- The need for cyber law
- The Electronic Transactions Act, 2063
- Privacy: the Individual Privacy Act, 2075
- Copyright and software
- National Cyber Security Policy, 2080
- Professional duties
- Seeing the ideas: the institutions, the penalty ceilings, the trust chain and the first hour
Key points
- Cyber law supplies recognition (records, signatures), crime definitions and rights; jurisdiction and evidence are enduring difficulties.
- The ETA 2063 recognises electronic records and digital signatures, creates the Controller of Certification and Certifying Authorities, and defines computer offences.
- Sections 44, 45 and 46 carry up to 3 years and Rs 2,00,000; section 47 up to 5 years and Rs 1,00,000; section 52 (computer fraud) up to 2 years and Rs 1,00,000.
- The Individual Privacy Act 2075, the Copyright Act 2059, the Criminal Code 2074 and the 2080 cyber security policy complete the framework.
- Professionals act within authorisation, protect data, respect licences and preserve evidence.
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The syllabus asks for
- Concepts
- Building blocks in Nepal
- Digital signatures and PKI
- Challenges and good practice
- Seeing the ideas: the front desks, the four models, the index, the savings and the signature
Key points
- e-Governance covers service delivery, transparency and participation; models are G2C, G2B, G2G and G2E; maturity runs from emerging to connected.
- EGDI-style indices average service, infrastructure and human-capital components; cost-benefit estimates should count citizens' time and access.
- Nepali building blocks: National ID, Nagarik App, GIDC and office systems, tax, customs and procurement portals, and Palika software.
- A digital signature hashes the document and transforms the digest with the private key; a CA's certificate binds the public key to the identity.
- Success depends on inclusion, security, interoperability, legal safeguards and reengineered processes.
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The syllabus asks for
- Ethical frameworks
- Everyday cyberethics
- Algorithmic bias: where it comes from
- Measuring fairness
- Transparency and accountability
- Seeing the ideas: faces, pipelines, rates and trade-offs
Key points
- Utilitarian, duty, virtue and care frameworks, plus the ACM and IEEE codes, structure ethical decisions; refuse, document and escalate when asked to do wrong.
- Everyday cyberethics covers privacy, misinformation, harassment, plagiarism, piracy and netiquette.
- Bias enters through history, sampling, measurement, labels, aggregation and deployment; proxies defeat attribute removal.
- Fairness metrics (demographic parity, disparate impact, equal opportunity, equalized odds, predictive parity) are computed from group confusion matrices and can conflict when base rates differ.
- Responsible systems are transparent, explainable, contestable, accountable and audited.
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The syllabus asks for
- What is e-waste?
- The life cycle of a device
- Managing e-waste
- Green computing
- Responsibility of the computing professional
- Seeing the ideas: the fires, the sorting line, the aisle, the flows and the footprint
Key points
- E-waste contains hazardous and valuable materials; informal burning harms health; most Nepali e-waste is stored or processed informally.
- A device's footprint is front-loaded (manufacture), so longer life, repair and reuse beat recycling, which beats disposal.
- Manage e-waste by reduce, reuse, recycle, EPR and the Basel framework; sanitise data before disposal.
- PUE = total ÷ IT power (DCiE is its reciprocal); energy = power × hours; carbon = energy × emission factor.
- Extending a laptop's service life from 3 to 5 years cuts its annual footprint by a quarter in the example.
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The paper
TU assessment: 60% final examination set by the university, 40% internal (assignments, lab work, attendance). Confirm the split in your college's notice.
Where the hours go
Teaching hours are the board's guide to how much of the paper each part carries.
- Unit 4 · Cyber and IT Law in Nepal8 h
- Unit 2 · Technology Adoption and Diffusion of Innovations7 h
- Unit 3 · The Digital Divide and Digital Nepal7 h
- Unit 5 · e-Governance in Nepal7 h
- Unit 1 · Technology and Society - Theories and History6 h
- Unit 6 · Cyberethics, Privacy and Algorithmic Fairness5 h
- Unit 7 · E-Waste, Green Computing and Sustainable Technology5 h