Our group did a podcast on option 2 for project 5, and group member Zach Imholte emailed a copy of the podcast to the teaching staff.
Reading 13: The New Literacy?
As we’ve discussed at various points throughout the semester, computer science and other related fields are increasingly becoming the main drivers of the modern, 21st century U.S. economy. For this reason, President Obama and others are pushing for computer science education to begin at younger ages and be more accessible prior to the college level through programs such as Computer Science For All. While I certainly believe this is a valuable and wise proposition, I also realize that there exist some barriers to fully implementing widespread youth computer science instruction. While it may be a stretch to dub it the “new literacy” at this point in time, I do believe that sooner than many think, computer science will be an essential set of skills that spans across a variety of fields and disciplines – even those not currently associated with it.
The arguments for introducing computer science to everyone, especially in K-12 schooling, are fairly straight forward. While the number of college students majoring in computer science is growing year by year across the U.S., computer science programs still often have less students than other disciplines both inside and outside of the engineering field. Introducing computer science at a younger age in a higher number of schools would present the field as a viable study and career path to a greater number of students. Speaking from experience, my high school did not offer many computer science courses, and I never had the chance to take the few that it did. As a result, I came to Notre Dame with a complete lack of computer science skills and only found my place in the field after first going through stints as both an electrical engineering and then computer engineering major. I certainly feel that my education would have benefitted from an earlier exposure to computer science, allowing me to find my calling earlier without the struggles of going through majors that weren’t the right fit. How many other students would have loved computer science but never gave it a try due to their lack of exposure to it?
Of course there do exist some obstacles to widespread computer science education at the K-12 level. As one of the articles for this week’s readings mentioned, there isn’t really a pipeline for certified computer science instructors to teach at the grade school and high school levels. Currently, college programs that provide degrees in lower level education often don’t include computer science skills in their curriculums. As a result, the vast majority of instructors in grade schools and high schools across the country don’t have the ability to teach computer science themselves. Bringing widespread computer science education to America’s youth is going to be a time and resource intensive process as programs and mindsets change to accommodate the new expectations.
Whether or not computer science at the K-12 level should be an elective or a requirement is a difficult question. I think at least one or a few basic level courses that introduce computational thinking, logic, and fundamental programming skills should be required as additive courses to the standard one already required in schools. Beyond that point, I think more advanced level courses should be offered as electives, and they should be able to replace other courses that might not interest a student as much, even if these courses are typically required parts of the standard curriculum. For example, I was required to take several history courses in high school, stretching through my senior year. While I valued these courses, I was pretty certain after my first one freshman year that I wouldn’t be pursuing anything related to history following high school. I would’ve jumped at the opportunity to replace my subsequent history courses with more valuable skills based courses such as those pertaining to computer science, but because the history courses were mandatory, I had no choice. I certainly think it will be a difficult balancing act to add required computer science to curriculums that have largely gone unchanged for many years, but ultimately America’s youth will be better off if given more options for classes and coursework that fit their interests and career ambitions.
While programming and computer science might not be everyone’s cup of tea, I do believe that anyone can learn to program if they put in the effort and receive the proper instruction. I don’t think this necessarily means that everyone should learn to program however. If programming and computer science don’t speak to you as an interesting pursuit, then that’s ok. The important thing is providing students a real chance at figuring out whether or not that is the case through the aforementioned initiatives to introduce nationwide computer science education at the K-12 levels of the schooling.
Project 4 – AI In The Movies
Our group did a podcast on option 3 for project 4, and group member Zach Imholte emailed a copy of the podcast to the teaching staff.
Reading 12: Trolls
The internet has revolutionized the way people interact and communicate in today’s modern world, but it has also given a new forum to what are commonly referred to as “trolls.” It isn’t the only technological advance beleaguered by troll behavior – since the proliferation of the telephone, mischievous youth have engaged in relatively mild troll-like prank phone calls – but it has given trolls their most powerful medium yet. When combined with the seemingly intrinsic internet attributes of anonymity and widespread reach, internet trolling can pose a significant threat to safety and common decency.
From simple anonymous threats to intricately planned personal attacks such as the story of a troll impersonating a woman’s dead father across various sites from this week’s set of readings, internet trolling often crosses the line beyond the joking or “kidding around” that trolls themselves often try to pass their deeds off as. I’ve read countless stories of children being relentlessly bullied online by trolls and even their own classmates. It doesn’t always do so, but trolling can and does ruin lives.
Most commonly, internet trolling manifests itself on comment sections, message boards, forums, and sites designed for communication and dialogue between strangers. These places often give power to trolls through their voting features, where a comment gets more attention via community voting. The most controversial comments often rise to the top, creating a competition among trolls to see who can say the most outrageous, hurtful thing. And with anonymity nearly guaranteed on most internet sites that require nothing more than an email address to sign up, trolls often have little to fear in terms of repercussions in their own lives.
After the last three paragraphs, it should be clear that I dislike the activities of internet trolls and consider their widespread internet reign a problem. Despite this, I still don’t believe that elimination of online anonymity is the solution. Anonymity is both a blessing and a curse online, but the benefits outweigh the negatives for a great deal of people. As evidenced by the reading from this week that discusses online anonymity for Google Plus users, anonymity can often be a good, vital tool for the oppressed. Activists and other individuals who would otherwise be in real danger for voicing their views require anonymity to continue using the internet as the powerful means for change that it is.
Furthermore, I don’t believe that the burden falls on technology companies to go through extraordinary measures to curtail internet trolling. Besides providing the already standard measures of blocking other users, filtering out profanity, etc., companies shouldn’t be responsible for constant vigilance over the free speech of the people who use their products. I certainly admire a company that sticks to sound morals and chooses to enforce conduct guidelines on its site, but unless the site/service is actively promoting bad behavior, the words of its users shouldn’t be an indictment of the company itself. We don’t expect phone companies or retailers like Apple to constantly monitor phone calls to weed out and report trolls and others who make hurtful comments over the phone, and we shouldn’t of internet companies either.
Trolling is a major problem on the internet, and I don’t have an easy solutions to it. Some people are always going to behave poorly, and for all the good it provides, I think the internet is still going to have its blemishes and negative spaces. Personally, I try to stay away from the common hotbeds of trolls. I frequent Reddit, but rarely dig too deep into comment sections. I watch videos on youtube, but hardly ever read the responses of other users to a video I may like. And I rarely ever post comments or replies myself. But staying away from comments doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Whenever I see another story about truly harmful online trolling, I’m convinced that perhaps the most affective – and admittedly hardest – method of counteracting this problem is to look to the source. The people trolling and their mindsets are the real problem. If prevented from trolling online, they would simply find another method of negatively affecting others. Parents, educators, and society itself need to do a better job showing people, from an early age, that online trolling is no laughing matter.
Reading 11: Automation
As technology continually replaces jobs in almost every imaginable market – especially labor intensive manufacturing industries – society constantly faces the ethical question of whether or not automation is ultimately a good thing for society as a whole. Do speeding up the pace of production and lowering the cost outweigh the potential harm of increased unemployment that would likely result from near full automation? These aren’t easy questions to answer.
As it turns out, the debate over automation is nothing new. Even 19th Century Luddite textile workers feared the impact of new production “technology” such as spinning frames and power looms that would lower the need for their previously in demand skills. But should the advance of technology be halted to maintain the status of jobs that would be rendered obsolete otherwise? In my opinion, no. While groups like the Luddites may experience temporary issues related to new technology potentially replacing them in the workplace, society as a whole benefits when the free market is allowed to dictate how new technologies are employed. If new technology was prohibited from interfering with already existing job markets, we likely wouldn’t have a variety of modern conveniences and advancements. For example, commercial airplane travel wouldn’t have been allowed to supersede ocean liners and trains as the preferred method of long distance travel. Certainly ship and train companies experienced a decline in passengers and employees as a result of the rise of airplane technology and travel, but society as a whole has benefited from it. While this isn’t a direct correlation to our question of automation, it does exhibit the impact of new technology on a variety of industries and how it can have immediate negative aspects, but ultimately displays a net benefit over time as people adjust to a new normal. Someday, automation itself may even completely replace pilots in the airline industry, but a little immediate discomfort will be worth it for the likelihood of increased safety and other benefits.
In my opinion, people should look at automation as something that frees humans for other endeavors. With less people needed to man steps along an assembly line, more can spend their time creating, inventing, and pushing society forward at an even faster rate. Today’s youth would be wise to plan for an ever more automated future, making decisions on college majors and career paths that reflect this eventuality. This will prepare them for a world with less blue-collar, manufacturing jobs. The people who will be most negatively affected by more automation are those already entrenched in jobs that will be affected. One potential solution that has been proposed is a universal basic income. This idea seems a little too socialistic for many Americans to embrace, but we have to be open to all potential options in a future where there might not be enough jobs to go around. I’m still uncertain how I feel about the idea myself, but it might be worth considering, at least in the interim until society has adapted to increased automation and the workforce has been able to retrain for other roles. One does have to keep in mind that automation won’t be an overnight sensation. As evidenced by our discussion of the Luddites, automation has been an ongoing process for a long time, and thus far, everyone has been able to successfully adapt given enough time. We don’t still see Luddites on the local street corner protesting power looms.
Ultimately, I think automation is a good thing for society. As I touched on at numerous times previously, there will certainly be pain points along the way. But increased automation frees up society for expanded creative and intellectual work beyond the production line and service oriented jobs. I don’t think the developers and utilizers of automation should feel bad for pushing technology forward. Who knows how many diseases we’ll cure or inventions we’ll think up when we aren’t spending our time driving busses or building mass produced cars.
Reading 10: Net Neutrality
Although net neutrality has been in the news quite frequently as of late, many Americans are still unlikely to understand exactly what the topic at hand refers to. Put simply, net neutrality is simply the assurance that all legal internet traffic is treated fairly and equally by internet service providers. The implication for the average consumer is that your episode of House of Cards from Netflix arrives via streaming to your computer at the same data transfer rate as a page you request from ESPN. Without net neutrality, it would be possible for internet service providers (ISP’s) to create “fast lanes” where some content would benefit from a faster delivery rate to the end customer over other traffic. Internet service providers would of course charge a premium for fast lanes. In the worst case scenarios, a lack of net neutrality could allow providers to throttle or prevent entirely the delivery of content at their will, such as content related to their competitors. As the internet plays an increasingly larger role in our lives, there has been a great deal of debate over the concept of net neutrality, with arguments over its legality, ethics, and even the role of the Federal Communications Commission in regulating internet traffic policies. Generally, content providers and a larger contingent of consumers have come down on the supporting side of net neutrality while internet service providers have argued against strict enforcement of net neutrality and even against the entire concept.
In my opinion, net neutrality is a good thing, and the FCC should be allowed to regulate the internet as if it were a public service/utility. While I naturally have reservations over unnecessary government intervention and regulation, in this instance, I believe that regulation is necessary to ensure continued innovation and a free marketplace. The primary concern in this matter should be a combination of ensuring that the market remains free and open to innovation and that consumers have fair access to the internet access they pay for.
Although service providers have argued that regulation stifles innovation, I believe that to be false in this situation. If service providers are allowed to offer fast lanes, block content, and interfere with traffic in other ways, it could place even more of a burden on new competition. Smaller competitors would be unable to compete with the lucrative deals forged by large providers. For example, if ATT were to strike a deal with Netflix for exclusive, superior fast lanes (or, far fetched as it sounds, even sole distribution rights), smaller providers would be unable to compete as Netflix is one of the top drivers of modern internet traffic.
It may seem strange to think of internet access as a public service and basic right, but we’re fast approaching that reality. I don’t think that access to the internet in general is a basic right; however, if one does pay for access to the internet, I do believe it should be a right to have fair and equal access to everything that the internet provides. Using an admittedly simple analogy – if I were to sign up for a library card, I would expect access to the entire library. We do get into some ethical grey areas when considering free internet access however. Facebook has been the subject of scrutiny over its “Free Basics” program in India, Egypt, and other countries. The program essentially allows free access to a specific set of services and sites while restricting access to others. Net neutrality supporters have argued this initiative directly opposes a free and open internet, while Facebook has argued that restricting to a subset of select sites is the cost of providing free access and getting the world online. While I strongly supported net neutrality previously in this post, I do see both sides of the argument when it comes to free internet access. I think this situation illustrates just how nuanced and complex the net neutrality issue can be. Governments and regulators have a series of tough decisions ahead of them. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the issue of net neutrality in the news consistently in the future.
Project 3 Reflection
After writing a letter to one of Indiana’s Senators on the topic of encryption and privacy in addition to my previous blog post on the topic for one of our course readings, I’m even more convinced that this hot button issue is vitally important to the future of our country and the world at large. As I wrote in our letter to the Senator, our phones and electronic devices are quickly becoming the hubs of our digital lives, storing personal photos, banking information, and other private data. The government nor anyone else should be able to interfere with the protection of personal data, due to the massive threat lessened data security poses to millions of innocent people. While the average person may have nothing to hide from the government, they do have everything to hide from the criminals who would take advantage of government sanctioned weaknesses in digital security. Unfortunately, letting in the government also means letting in ill-intentioned individuals of all sorts. The two go hand in hand. And worse yet, the conscription of Apple Engineers to work for the government by forcing them to write code they object to directly contradicts the American ideals of free enterprise.
Politicians from both sides of the aisle have voiced varying opinions on this divisive nature. While other topics may dominate Presidential candidate debates and the public consciousness, we’d be wise to heed the coming storm over personal data. As a computer science student myself, I care just as strongly about this topic as others more prevalently discussed by politicians. It certainly affects the way I perceive politicians and who I support.
Apple has justifiably stood strong in the face of F.B.I. pressure, and the issue seems bound for a variety of courts, including the Supreme Court – if not today, then tomorrow. As of right now, I’m really unsure who will win if/when it comes to that. A variety of high profile politicians and government agencies support the F.B.I. and its demands, while Apple has managed the rare unification of technology companies throughout Silicon Valley and beyond behind its own cause. I’m certainly not resigned to a 1984-esque, dystopian future of government surveillance and no private information. I don’t think millions of Americans will be either. The United States has time and time again refused to let fear dictate policy, especially in regards to personal liberties and rights. We must refuse once more.
Reading 08: Patent Trolls
On the surface, patents seem like a good thing. Just as trademarks and copyrights protect creators in other lines of work, patents are supposed to be a method of ensuring the financial interest of inventors. They are meant to encourage the open sharing of knowledge, ideas, and subsequent inventions under the supposedly reassuring guise of protection. From our reading on intellectual property, a patent is described as “an exclusive right granted for an invention – a product or process that provides a new way of doing something, or that offers a new technical solution to a problem.” That doesn’t seem so bad, does it? With a definition like that and an ultimate goal to “encourage innovation, which in turn enhances the quality of human life,” how could anyone argue that patents are bad? Going just by their definition, patents are good ethically because they protect the hard earned inventions of our nation’s brightest engineers, they’re good economically because they encourage competition and innovation in the marketplace, and they’re good socially because that competition and innovation breeds advances that benefit society. Patents may have been created with good intentions, but their transition to the modern world of technology and computer software has been anything but smooth. What once protected innovation now stifles it. What once guided companies to innovate and create their own products now persuades them to cease creative efforts entirely. What once encouraged anyone and everyone to be an inventor now turns people and even companies into trolls.
In my opinion, patents still have a place in society, if they’re reigned in from their current overcomplexity, ambiguity, and most of all, application to the software industry. Patents make complete sense when applied to a physical, invented object. The readings use the perfect example of Eli Whitney inventing and patenting the cotton gin. A patent on the cotton gin prevented others from profiting on Eli Whitney’s invention – something no one else had created before. It would be unethical if Whitney had to sit back and watch others benefit by selling something he spent a great deal of time and effort inventing. Worse still, society would be at a loss if Whitney was forced to hide a patentless invention for fear of others stealing it. Yet just as the example of the physical cotton gin perfectly demonstrates the good of patents, many modern cases of software patents demonstrate the bad. I’m not entirely set against all software patents, but I do think that patents are more naturally suited to being applied to physical inventions.
I think the real issue at hand is how ambiguous and vague patents have been allowed to become. In the “This American Life” podcast/radio segment, the hosts describe how current litigation is ongoing concerning existing patents that cover website functionality so that “when you scroll your mouse over certain sections, pop-up boxes appear.” Whatever happened to patents only being for ideas that are “non-obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art?” I think this example demonstrates that it’s not necessarily patents on software specifically that are the problem, but rather patents on broad, somewhat obvious and/or rudimentary software practices. Both the patent office and the Supreme Court are at fault for allowing the current state of vague software patents, as evidenced by the article “The Supreme Court doesn’t understand software, and that’s a problem.” That’s not just a problem – it’s a catastrophe for a world increasingly reliant on software for nearly every facet of life. In my opinion, this lack of understanding by the officials who grant, oversee, and rule on patent cases is the fundamental cause of today’s patent troll mess.
Unfortunately, I believe that the current status quo of patents and patent trolls is solid proof that the current system is broken. Even one of the leading technology innovators in the world, Elon Musk, acknowledges that “receiving a patent really just [means] that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit.” It might be time to reconsider the workings of a intellectual property measure that was devised specifically to protect people exactly like Musk. When an innovating technology company like Tesla abandons all of its patents in favor of an open-source model while a ‘company’ like Intellectual Ventures – that doesn’t actually create anything – hordes patents by the thousand, there’s obviously a problem.
Reading 07: Advertising
Before reading some of the provided articles for this week’s assignment, I rarely considered the broader implications of advertising, particularly the online variety and the role of computer science in it. Sure online ads are annoying, but that’s why the computer science Gods gave us Adblock – or so I thought. Now, after reading in more detail on the subject, I realize how significant and invasive online ads can be. And even despite this invasive nature of online ads, I also recognize the potential unethical nature of using adblock to circumvent them. Like many of the topics we’ve discussed this semester, there are many different angles to consider and a great deal of moral ambiguity.
When asked to consider ethical concerns regarding online advertising, the first thing that jumps to mind is how annoying – yet seemingly harmless – they can be. Two minute ads on youtube for movies I already know of or products I don’t care about simply waste my time, but they don’t seem to be actually causing any harm. Yet as our readings for this week demonstrate, advertisers are getting smarter, more cunning, and more unethical. I found the article Data Doppelgangers particularly interesting in its description of the way advertisers use large population statistics in an effort to trick us into feeling as if we’re being treated as individuals. While funny when targeted ads miss their mark and show us products completely unrelated to our interests and lives, its actually more concerning and unsettling when advertisers are able to properly target us based on data they’ve collected. As the article describes it, this produces an “uncanny valley effect.” Something about the rough approximation of apparent intelligence on behalf of a website’s targeted ads appropriately strikes us as disconcerting.
Beyond simply making us feel uncomfortable, online advertising, especially the targeted variety that uses specific individual data, can actually be based on particularly unethical practices – namely the gathering of private individual data by large companies for use or even sale without an individual’s express permission. As the reading from The Guardian discusses, Facebook users reveal – often unwittingly – potentially sensitive private data when using social media sites. Information in the public domain can be accessed and used by almost anyone. It seems pretty unethical for a company to make money off of selling data on my online actions. When I like pages on Facebook or post something, I’m not doing it for the monetary gain of some advertising data collector. But even worse, despite what you may think at the time, any bit of personal information shared on Facebook or any other social media site may come back to significantly haunt you. Just look at the distant past and questionable decisions brought up in heated political debates and attack ads during election season. This trend is only likely to increase as the members of the Facebook generation mature and enter politics themselves along with their own increasingly public follies on full display for anyone to see. And with advertisers gathering and potentially selling any and all data at will, even deleting something from Facebook or another site isn’t enough to guarantee that it never resurfaces. Maybe there should be more concrete measures in place to ensure companies safeguard user data and allow for individuals to better protect themselves from the unending spread of their personal information, but at the same time, individuals should be more aware of their actions in today’s internet age. Once something is online, it can rarely ever be completely taken offline.
Like many ethical questions, there exists another side to this ethical debate. When visiting websites, shopping online, or using social media sites like Facebook we rarely if ever explicitly give our permission for our data to be collected. But are we giving it implicitly? It’s almost impossible to think of a time when we didn’t have access to the internet and its wealth of resources and information – many of which are free from standard payment models. We don’t pay to google something. We don’t pay to look at a Wikipedia page. We don’t pay to read about our favorite sports team on ESPN. Or do we? Much of the modern internet is dependent on a model in which consumers freely divulge their information and accept the proliferation of their data in exchange for “free” access to their favorite sites and resources. I doubt many would trade this model for one in which we instead pay directly for access. This raises the question of whether or not it is truly ethical for an individual to use a tool like AdBlocker to circumvent online advertising. While I do use one myself, I do wonder if by doing so I’m actually breaking the implicit contract I’ve agreed to with the sites I visit. By and large, they provide free content to me in exchange for the ad revenue they generate by me simply seeing their ads. If enough people were to start using tools like AdBlocker, sites may even be forced to switch to a pure payment model, something few people would be happy about. For better and worse, data has become the currency of the internet, and that doesn’t seem likely to change anytime soon.
Reading 06: Unethical Government Backdoors
Technology companies are currently facing an intense amount of scrutiny and debate concerning one of the most difficult balancing acts of the modern, digital age. Should companies value individual customer privacy, or should they instead cede to the demands of government agencies for less security in the name of saving lives and national security? While I think there exists a middle ground for both goals to be respected and achieved without denying the other entirely, if forced to choose between the two extremes, the answer is clear. Companies like Apple should not lessen the security of their products and build one key fits all government backdoors. As Apple’s CEO Tim Cook put it, they should not “undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.”
Like most ethical debates, I do think there exists a great deal of grey area in the case of government technology backdoors. And I do believe that a company like Apple should endeavor to help a government agency like the FBI in the proper scenarios under the right circumstances. In fact, Apple has been making every ethical effort in its power to assist the FBI in its investigation over the past several months. But this new demand by the FBI falls well outside the bounds of an ethical request.
Make no mistake, the San Bernadino terrorist attack was a tragedy, and the perpetrators and all involved should be brought to justice. But the U.S. government should not act unethically itself in its efforts to do so, and it shouldn’t force U.S. companies like Apple to act unethically on the its behalf. The FBI’s intentions may be good, as noted by Tim Cook in his customer address, but in its efforts to protect national security, the FBI is actually putting millions of innocent Americans at risk. Despite any promises that an Apple produced iPhone backdoor would only be used in this case and other special circumstances, “there is no way to guarantee such control.” If Apple either willingly submits to this request or is forced to under court order, there is no going back – no closing of Pandora’s proverbial box once it has been opened. The ability to hack an iPhone and recover all of its data will exist for misuse by anyone capable of accessing the backdoor – whether that be identity thieves, computer hackers, or even corrupt government officials. By trying to recover the information of a few terrible individuals, we would actually be putting everyone at risk. It is this very risk posed to all that discredits the argument some may make that if you have nothing to hide then you shouldn’t be worried about lower security measures and less privacy. In a world where iPhones and other digital devices are increasingly becoming the central hubs of our lives, we may not have anything to hide from the FBI, but we have everything to hide – back accounts, personal identification information, etc. – from criminals, hackers, and other ill-doers who would use digital backdoors for nefarious purposes.
Besides the unethical nature of the inherent risk posed to millions of Americans by the FBI’s backdoor demand, there also exists the unethical implications the demand has specifically on Apple and its employees – namely its software engineers. The article The Conscription of Apple’s Software Engineers summarizes this point perfectly. The point is right there in the title. If forced to bow to the FBI in court, Apple and its engineers are essentially becoming forced employees of the government, doing the government’s hacking and investigative work for it. What then if every software engineer at Apple refuses to write the unethical backdoor code? What if every engineer at Apple resigns under ethical grounds? Would the government punish disobeyers in court? While this sort of hypothetical takes the situation to the extreme, it showcases the absurdity of the FBI’s request. The government does not “have a claim on the brainpower and creativity of citizens and corporations.” If it does, under the auspices of an exploitative reading of an Act passed in 1789, then I fear for the future of a free United States of America.
ethicsryanmoran 