Presentation Transcript

1. Computer Ethics & Social Issues

   The Impact of I.T. on Productivity and Quality of Life
2. Computers are Everywhere!
3. Computers are Helpful!
4. Computers Can Save Society!
5. Computers Will Kill Our Enemies! http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/01/skunk_works_unveils_blackbird_replacement_capable_of_mach_6_flight/
6. Computers May Kill Us!
7. “Excuse me, but have you heard about the A.I. Over-Lord?”
8. What is the Real Effect of IT on our lives? Automation Reduction of manual processes Consistent quality of work Is this always true? Design flaws Unforeseen error conditions Chaotic environment
9. What is the Real Effect of IT on our lives? Accessibility ADA Compliance Freedom of Information Online libraries exist for both the rich and the poor Chance for a better education Chance for a better life
10. What is the Real Effect of IT on our lives? Multi-functionality Workplace Email, group meetings, research, reporting, analysis, engineering All at once with multiple programs running on the same machine! Home Telephone, internet search, video games, house hunting, job hunting, online purchases, downloading media, etc.
11. Technology is Available Everywhere!
12. Unless You Are Broke Then you have nothing.
13. The Digital Divide The Haves vs. The Have-Nots Who has access to technology? Rich vs. Poor Is technology accessible? Is consumerism focused in metropolitan areas? Who knows how to use technology? Education Who has a use for technology? White-collar vs Blue-collar?
14. Technology and Consumerism As consumers become accustomed to certain levels of service, they expect these levels or greater from all other service providers Walmart vs. Amazon Walmart has cheap prices in-store Amazon has more products, a more consumer-friendly online shopping experience, and excellent ability to recommend a product you will like
15. Technology and Consumerism What if you can’t compete with Amazon? Lack of online presence or quality Lack of quick shipping Slow to market due to fewer trade deals with manufacturers What if you are a struggling businessman in a developing country?
16. The Global Digital Divide
17. Developing Countries Large divide between the rich and the poor The rich will use technology for business The poor, if given access, use technology solely for business No home theaters, no gaming, no P2P In a developed country, a poor person can gain access to technology to become rich. In a developing country, the poor will lack access to such means.
18. Developing Countries Even if technology were to be gifted by a developed country, there are problems No Internet without communications infrastructure If infrastructure exists, then of what quality? Reliable utilities? Access to resources? Culture How quickly can a society integrate technology into their lives?
19. Example March 7, 1876 Bell's U.S. patent No. 174,465 for the telephone is granted. December 20, 1990: Berners-Lee created the first website on the World Wide Web. It took 114 years for a developed country to evolve from simple voice communication to HTTP.
20. An Ethical Question If technology is so grand that it should be so finely intertwined into our daily lives as members of a developed country, is there a responsibility to make every effort to expand technology’s area of influence to developing nations?
21. Is Technology Really All That Great?
22. Grandma Doesn’t Understand
23. How To Do Stuff For you, the College Student™ “Yodawg, order a few pizzas for the party” You have choices Walk/drive to pizza place, place order in person Use cellphone to call and place an order Go online and place your order with real-time tracking For Grandma “Maw-maw, I’d love a pizza tonight if that’s ok with you.” She has choices She makes a pizza She tells you to go get one yourself, you little punk because she’s got a bingo game tonight and all she needs to eat is a package of peanut butter crackers to help her control her “sugar”
24. How To Do Stuff For you, the College Student™ “Well, it’s been a few months now. Guess I better buy that textbook.” You have options Buy online from Amazon Buy from school bookstore Buy from competing bookstore For Grandma “Well, it’s been a few days since I checked my insulin. Guess I better buy some diabetic supplies.” She has options Consult the phone book and call around town for her preferred brand Go into a diabetic coma and get some for free from the paramedics Call that number that is always showing up on the television during breaks of The Dating Game on GameTV.
25. How To Do Stuff For you, the College Student™ “I need to get something for my friend for a gift.” You have options Go to Walmart Use Amazon to shop online Buy a gift card For Grandma “Aaron’s birthday is coming up… what to do?” She has options Knit/crochet/sew something together Bake something Send him a card with a $5 bill in it
26. Grandma Don’t Care
27. Technological Age Divide Young people these days grew up with technology Video games Cell phones Internet Old people have no clue Technology evolves too quickly for them to keep pace Grandma might have a cell phone, but it likely doesn’t connect to the internet and she never has it on in order to save battery life
28. Technological Age Divide Consumerism If service providers are constantly focusing on the young, what is there for an old person? Do senior citizens become second-class citizens because they don’t have access to or understand the newest technological improvements?
29. Case Study Grandma McKay 84 years old Born in 1930 Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto Mahatma Gandhi began his protests in India Twinkies are invented The chocolate chip cookie was invented The Great Depression started
30. Case Study Grandma McKay In her lifetime, she has seen the invention of Polaroid photography FM radio The atomic bomb The microwave oven The audio cassette VCR MRI Cell phones Doppler radar
31. Case Study Grandma McKay Drives to Mississippi every year for family reunion Gets lost every time Consults outdated maps when planning her trips Never calls ahead to reserve hotel accommodation Has no GPS or alerting system for traffic Has to “wing it” when she gets lost because she has no accurate frame of reference
32. Case Study Grandma McKay If she used technology to help plan her travels and assist her during travel, she would not be as likely to get lost She doesn’t choose to not use technology out of reluctance to try new things, she simply has no understanding of what she is missing She has no computer, internet, or GPS Her cellphone operates off of payment cards She forgets what brand of card she should be buying, gets the wrong one, gets upset and refuses to buy more
33. Case Study If Grandma gets lost and can’t find her way back, what happens? We say “Why didn’t you use GPS?” “Why didn’t you use your cellphone for geolocation?” “Why didn’t you Google it?” “Why isn’t your phone on? I couldn’t call you or locate you via Find My Friends!”
34. Case Study Do older people deserve less service, help, or pity if they choose to not use the latest technological inventions? How should they stay current? How liable are they for their own misfortune? Foreseeability? What, if any, social responsibility do we have as information technologists to their needs? How do you market products to technologically-adverse aspects of the population? Should you even care?
35. Technology & Healthcare
36. Technology & Healthcare Technological advances make surgery less invasive
37. Robotic Surgery Minimally-invasive, computer-controlled procedures which enable a surgeon to operate remotely
38. Technology & Healthcare IBM’s Watson Cluster of 90 IBM Power 750 servers Each with a 3.5 GHz POWER7 8 core processor Four threads per core Total of 2,880 processor cores and 16 TB of RAM Can process 500 GB of data per second Performance is 80 TeraFLOPS Not powerful enough to rank in the top 500 supercomputers list
39. Watson
40. Cyber Diagnosis! IBM’s Watson is analyzing patient data to offer a better diagnosis and treatment Initial goal was to help oncologists make better decisions for cancer treatment Success has led to the diagnosis and treatment of other chronic diseases http://www.fastcompany.com/3001739/ibms-watson-learning-its-way-saving-lives
41. How Watson Works Step 1 Provide Watson with access to digital versions of medical textbooks, journals, patient histories and treatment guidelines. Step 2 Doctors access the Watson App on a tablet to access Watson via the cloud. Doc logs in to Watson and does some Q&A
42. How Watson Works Step 3 Watson interprets the Doctor’s input via natural language analysis. Keywords are discovered and evaluated. Particular types of cancer and tumors are identified by the Doctor’s input. Step 4 Massively parallel processors review an internal medical database. Patient records are accessed. Medical histories are evaluated. Recent data from patient medical tests are read. Doctors’ and nurses’ notes are reviewed.
43. How Watson Works Step 5 Watson generates a hypothesis for treatment based upon accessed records and cross-referenced evaluation matched with actual medical histories and journals. Various treatments will be suggested with weighted levels of confidence Human doctor then decides which of the options seems the best
44. Watson’s Impact Initially Watson made several mistakes due to documented human error Misdiagnosis by doctors and human error in treatment processes exist in the documentation Watson evaluates ~20% of initial diagnosis of cancer are eventually altered 1 in 5 chance that the prescribed treatment is wrong! These human errors, as part of the Watson database, reduce Watson’s overall accuracy Fixing this problem brings more scrutiny upon the medical practice
45. Building a Better Doctor
46. Cyber-Medicine Ethical Issues HIPAA Who has access to the medical records? Who controls Watson? If Watson has confidential data in its memory or hard drive space, then doesn’t the technician who works on Watson have access as well? Body of Knowledge Watson’s knowledge is based upon human works If these works are flawed, so is Watson How does Watson improve? Who controls the methodology? Computer Science v. Medical Science
47. Cyber-Medicine Ethical Issues Cost The latest technology isn’t cheap Watson currently used for cancer treatment One of the most costly medical areas Watson is not being used to treat simple illness While it would possibly be easier to diagnose the lesser diseases, the cost of using Watson to do so is prohibitive The latest technology is not available everywhere To use Watson, Dr. must have a tablet, access to internet, be an oncologist, etc. Even though the Internet is everywhere, the same level of service is not available universally
48. Cyber-Medicine Ethical Issues Impact on Healthcare Costs Advanced tools used to diagnose and treat illness or injury more effectively and with less overall impact on the patient Better = More Expensive Healthcare industry is slow to advance coverage Medical insurance premiums rise to cover the greater cost People who could benefit from technological advances may not have access due to financial trouble Haves vs. Have-nots
49. Cyber-Ethics! Who “deserves” technological advancement? Those who have the ability to create and use it? Those who have a need for it? Those who can afford it? Is there a societal obligation to provide improved quality of life to all human beings?If no, why not? If so, who says?
50. Productivity
51. Productivity Computer workstations Used to be dumb terminals connected to a mainframe which shared resources such as software, printers, data storage, etc. Evolved into autonomous workstations which had exclusive access to local resources to lessen the load on networks Network communication evolved to accommodate faster data transfer, allowing interconnected LAN structures
52. Mobile Computing Emergence of cloud computing and mobile devices has eliminated much of the need for individual workstations For the worker who uses technology casually, a tablet, smartphone and/or ultrabook is all they need to be productive Online meetings Chat Email File authoring software
53. BYOD Bring Your Own Device Many employers are allowing employees to bring their personal computing devices to work for business use Saves the business money No cost of providing technology No liability to the business for the device Employees enjoy the benefit of having the freedom of owning their device
54. BYOA Bring Your Own App Like BYOD for software Employees can use their preferred applications to perform the same business needs Often takes advantage of cloud services Dropbox Office 365 Evernote Employers don’t have to maintain a server for these shared services, all costs of the software is assumed by the employee
55. BYO Ethical Problem! If a business supports BYO and decides to no longer offer new employees computer workstations or software: Is it fair to make the purchase of hardware and software a requirement of employment? Discrimination? Is it fair to put the liability of business information security on the employee? Legally protected data? Exposure to risk? What if the device is stolen? What if the software is not patched and up-to-date?
56. Policy Enforcement Is it ethical to enforce a corporate policy upon an employee’s personal device? “If your laptop does not have antivirus installed and up-to-date, it will be denied access to the network.” What if you can’t afford the software? How is the policy enforced? Who decides what antivirus vendor is acceptable? Not all are created equal!
57. Telecommuting
58. Telecommuting Ability to work from home Increasingly popular in the tech industry Benefits Ability for employers to recruit talent from anywhere Ability for employees to juggle multiple responsibilities with ease Detriments Harder to supervise the telecommuting employee How do you know if they are giving it their all?
59. Ethics of Telecommuting Loss of interaction with colleagues Could hinder innovation Possibility for poor communication Potential for dishonesty “Umm, yeah, it’s going to take me a few more days to hammer out that report… it’s been crazy lately with the tsunami and all…” Reduces carbon footprint Not forcing workers to travel helps corporations with green initiatives (a.k.a. government kickbacks for making nice with the EPA)
60. Evolving Workplace Technology is changing the way companies do business Services provided Tools implemented Workplace environment Young college recruits will be unfazed, as all is new anyway But what about older workers, who are unused to new technology, telecommuting and BYOD? Will they be able to keep up? Is the evolving workplace fair?