Series contains material related to the course Information Technology and Society COCR 941 taught by Dr. Norman Ball. Dr. Norman R. Ball created 12 programs dealing with Information Technology and Society for Open College.
Broadcasting was scheduled to begin in 1999. It was a time of growing public, corporate and government interest in, and anxiety over, information technology. The approach of what was called Y2K, the first day of January 2000, brought considerable fear that many software-based systems would fail because they had not been programmed to deal with dates beyond the last day of 1999. Given the approach of Y2K with all of the attendant worries and fears, the course was very topical and attracted considerable following from the beginning.
Dr. Ball interviewed 40 individuals from a range of professions, interests, perspectives and countries (Canada, Australia, UK, United States and Sweden) to gather material for the course. Under the guidance of professional staff at CJ RT/Open College Dr. Ball then incorporated these into the 12 programmes written by him and recorded at Open College studios.