This course is a technical introduction to Social Informatics: the discipline that studies the design, uses, and consequences of information and communication technologies (ICT) and that takes into account their interactions with institutional and cultural contexts. Information is the center of the course: its generation, dissemination, and processing, and the implications of these processes on modern society. Topics covered in the course include encodings, multimedia, data formats, networking, Internet security and privacy, software development, and viruses.