Is the world precisely what you want it to be? If so, this isn't the class for you. Otherwise, we'll talk about changing the world: successful (and less successful) activist movements/organizations/organizers - and what the difference is; how to get involved in local (and state level) politics; how to talk to people with whom you disagree; secrecy vs. transparency and security; and how to start your own project.

Puzzles meet awesome spy stories as we examine methods of encryption, crack ciphers, and build a theoretical understanding of information security.

A prime number is a number not divisible by any other number except 1, but that is just the beginning! Algorithms for finding primes start with the sieve of Eratosthenes date back to 200BC, and we are still promoting better ways to test if numbers are prime today: the most recent important development was only in 2008! This class will cover some history and a lot of math, from how we use primes today and historically, to how we find primes (where to look that there are a lot of primes) and how to test if a number is prime (yes, we can try dividing by every number below it, but that is slow! Learn a better method!).

Ciphers are a way to encode a message, so that only you and the person you are talking to can decode it. You may have heard of the Caesar Cipher (~50BC), or maybe some of its derivatives: ROT13, a substitution cipher, or more complicated such as the Vigenere Cipher (1553). Whether you have or haven't, this course will go over the basics of how these old systems worked, and how we have improved upon them - significantly. We've made a lot of progress in the past 500 years though, so come learn about how the one-time pad is unbreakable, but the Russians managed to mess that up. This is as much a history of cryptography course as it is a "how not to use cryptography" course.

We like restricting different people's access to things. I have a pin number for my bank account. I have a verification code that I use to buy things with my credit card on line. I have a password for my laptop - and a different password for logging onto MIT computers. Wireless networks might use several different ways to restrict who has access: You may or may not have heard of WEP, WPA(2) or MAC addresses. When my browser looks at a web page, if it requests https, then only the website and I can see what is sent. Really important documents (like medical records, or military research) often require participants to have two forms of identification: normally a token or physical thing as well as a memorized password. There is even money (Bitcoin) now, based on secure cryptography! For the first half of the class, I'll try to explain what all of these words and acronyms (WEP, WPA, WPA2, DES, 3DES, RSA, MAC address, Bitcoin) actually are, and what they mean. For the second half of the class, we will try to organize these into meaningful groups, and find out ways people have broken these algorithms - both by breaking the algorithms themselves, and by finding ways around them.

A presentation of some of this history of journalism in the United States, and a discussion about what new developments in journalism might mean for the world: new and developing types of media, first amendment rights, and information security.