CS 4xxx - Big Data Processing, The U.S. Monetary System and an Argument for the Improvement of it with Blockchain

The basis of my technical project is to propose a new course to the University of Virginia Computer Science curriculum regarding distributed computing and systems. As technology advances and society becomes more and more dependent on it year after year, the crucial concern about how our technological systems will be able to scale in order to handle extremely large amounts of data and requests arises while remaining resilient and fault tolerant brought about the rising use of distributed systems. This subject is a rather great area of interest to many large companies, governments, and systems, but is completely absent from the UVA curriculum. Researching applications of distributed systems in our modern world to replace systems that can now be considered rudimentary and the impacts it may have on our society is the bridge between this technical project and my STS project. My STS research will be focused on specifically on the application of blockchain and distributed ledger technology as a replacement for the United State’s current monetary system and the faults of our current system that became apparent as millions of people were negatively affected as we navigated through the COVID-19 pandemic.