January 17, 2017 – Introduction

My name is Nora Garvin and I am a senior IT Management major with a minor in Computing and Digital Technologies. I chose this combination of major and minor because I think it will give me the opportunity to combine my love of technology and working with people to solve important issues. I hope to begin tackling these issues next year when I begin my work as a technology consultant. I’m hoping this class will give me valuable insight that will help shape my habits in my future career so that I can always act ethically and avoid potentially negative situations.

The most pressing ethical issue that computer scientists are facing in my opinion is centered around privacy. With each new innovation comes a new argument over what information should be used or accessible by companies. Just because a certain technology is possible doesn’t mean it necessarily should be available. These issues also encompass the boundaries that limit government interference and monitoring, and when such things could be beneficial.

I am very interested to learn about the career and workplace issues topic because I think it will be very relevant to my work in the near future. Beyond the convenience of the topic however, I think these issues can have a big impact on productivity as well as innovation and therefore are very worth studying.

 

Reading 13: Computer Science 4 All

I like the idea of teaching computational thinking first rather than diving straight into trying to master syntax and the really technical part of coding, however I’m wondering to what extent this can be taught as opposed to being something that certain people are gifted with. The example that the Mother Jones article gave as those who look in an empty pantry and can see the ingredients as a stew and how to get to that point vs those who give up and order Chinese seems like more of an ingrown quality than something that you can teach someone. I am interested to see the techniques they would use however to try and foster computational thinking as a starting point for teaching coding.

One of the arguments for introducing everyone to coding is that coding literacy will become as ingrained into our societal infrastructure as reading and writing. This argument seems far off but I understand where the authors are coming from with this. We are so reliant on computers already and as thing continue to go that way it will become difficult to remain relevant without a knowledge of coding. I am wondering if there is a downside to everyone having knowledge of coding, for example more people able to spread virus or manipulate data in a negative way. I suppose that is a risk we will have to take however. I think another good point the Mother  Jones article made for why we should introduce young children to programming is so that they are able to ask the right questions of programmers working on a project in a language they’ve never seen. Having that base knowledge and therefore being able to communicate requirements more clearly to someone else to do the coding would increase productivity in the workplace. So even if they don’t themselves become programmers, they may still benefit from the base knowledge and understanding.

The article “Please Don’t Learn to Code” brought up a good point that this hysteria recently over the importance of teaching everyone to code enforces bad habits. It stresses coding and learning the language without understanding problems first. This creates a habit of most students to start cranking out code without first analyzing the issue and thinking through the solution which creates a less effective final product riddled with errors. As more people become caught up in the movement to teach coding to everyone, more “coding bootcamps” and other such institutions pop up that may not be teaching the right methodology.

Though I do think that everyone should be exposed to coding and computational learning because they are valuable skills and will be relevant to any job in the future, I don’t think it is necessarily the new literacy. I think there will always be programmers who dedicate their life to coding and make the majority of apps for us and a base knowledge of coding will be helpful in other parts of life, I’m not sure I believe that it would be as detrimental to not know it as illiteracy. Just because its not the new literacy however doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be taught. I think even outside of its many applications (get it?) in everyday life, learning coding can promote analytical thinking and help students ability to learn other subject through the process of learning how to connect the dots and systematically come to a conclusion.

Project 04: Letter to the Editor

April 20, 2017

 

To the Editor of The Observer,

The purpose of this letter is to inform the readers of this newspaper of the proposed changes to the Federal Communications Commission regarding net neutrality and the negative consequences these changes would have for all internet users.

Net neutrality laws prevent internet service providers from discriminating based on user, content, website and application. These laws ensure that all data is treated equally, no matter the circumstance. The importance of net neutrality may be tough to grasp initially, so let’s explore some examples. Currently, Netflix has approximately 93.8 million members. A sly ISP may become aware of the high volume traffic Netflix is receiving and wants to capitalize; so this ISP charges their users 1 dollar for every hour spent on Netflix. Those charges would quickly add up, making internet service unaffordable and unattractive to the consumer. Net neutrality laws prevent ISPs from implementing such unfair practices, thus saving the consumer from spending more money in order to enjoy popular websites and preventing the internet from becoming available to only the wealthy.

For the second example, let’s say that Google has a special interest in the 2020 Presidential Election. If their candidate wins, he promised to sign an Executive Order that will financially benefit their company. As a result, Google created a text analyzer that can determine the sentiment of a body of text. Any article with a negative sentiment about their candidate is pushed to the second page of results, and positive articles are pushed to the front. Google’s bias can potentially have a large impact on the election. Luckily, net neutrality laws prevent Google from behaving this way.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai wants to eliminate net neutrality rules and shift enforcement over to the Federal Trade Commission. Pai’s wants ISPs to create a voluntary system where they decide which rules they want to follow, rather than maintaining the clear cut rules that are currently implemented. Clearly this is an issue. A policy change like this would solely benefit internet service providers at the expense of consumers. If Pai’s plan is implemented, providers can collective agree on charging premiums to use certain websites, throttle services or sites that do not benefit them, and even censor the internet. ISP’s will be able to bully web dependent companies. Imagine if Netflix didn’t comply to an ISP’s request. That ISP could throttle their users every time the users used Netflix, which would ruin the user’s experience. As a result, Netflix could potentially lose thousands of customers. Without set rules, providers have too much power. Pai claims that he supports open internet but removing net neutrality laws will restrict the internet even more.

Unfortunately, if Pai’s plan is approved, the FTC rather than the FCC would control net neutrality which on its own isn’t an issue. However, the FTC doesn’t have the same power as the FCC as far as rulemaking, and are instead left simply deciding what is wrong with no way of prohibiting it in the future. In order to ensure our net neutrality is preserved and the internet remains an undiscriminating, attainable resource for users we should protest Ajit Pai’s proposed plan and advocate for the preservation of net neutrality.

Sincerely,

Nora Garvin and Morris LaGrand

Reading 11: Self Driving Cars

 

It seems that most people are agreed that self driving cars have the potential to be much safer than human drivers and drastically lower the amount of deaths caused by traffic related accidents. The government has taken this view recently and President Obama even allotted $4 billion of the federal budget for developing these vehicles. This increase in safety is certainly a driving (get it?) force behind developing self driving cars. Another motivation comes from companies like Uber however, because for them, self driving cars would cut costs drastically. If Uber didn’t have to pay its drivers, they could experience a much higher cut of their revenue. And now that there are multiple big players in the arena of developing self driving cars, its no longer just an opportunity for Uber, they have to participate or they’ll become irrelevant. If Google masters the self driving car before Uber and uses it for ride sharing, they would be able to offer prices much lower than Uber which would essentially drive them out of the market. However not everyone is on board with these cars. Many passengers are hesitant due to the idea that if the cars are programmed to minimize the number of injuries in the event of a crash, it may sacrifice the passengers to save a larger number of people outside the car. People don’t want to ride in a car programmed like that because they would want to be saved in the case of an emergency. I think the only fair way for programmers to handle this dilemma however, is to stick with the methodology of minimizing deaths. It would not be fair for a machine to choose who gets to live and die, so they must be programmed in a way that treats all individuals equally and doesn’t preference a rider or a pedestrian for example. I think because of the potential that self driving cars offer for reducing the number of traffic accidents we should definitely pursue the development of them but like mentioned in the Gizmodo article, it shouldn’t be too soon. The development should include thorough testing without humans involved, i.e. not in public on real roads, until the possibility of error has been reduced to almost zero. This is not an issue to be taken lightly because though it has potential to be a great thing, it also could be disastrous. Even when the developers are positive that the cars are ready for integration into society, it should happen in very small phases with a few cars at a time so that if a mistake is discovered, you don’t have hundreds of thousands of cars on the road with the same issue. I think the government definitely has a responsibility to regulate the self driving car industry because it will become something that affects everyone in the country. Just like the government regulates the safety of the airline industry, they should be involved in the safety of the automobile industry. They shouldn’t have to intervene on issues surrounding costs, but any factor that impacts the safety of the citizens using the cars should be overseen by the government. Companies should be held accountable for what happens as a result of their product and occasionally, the government is necessary to enforce this idea.

Project 03: Privacy Paradox

• After having gone through the challenges, have you decided to make any changes in your technology habits? If so, what are they?
  • I have not made any changes in my technology habits aside from overall trying to not use technology as much. This is less because of the privacy concern however than just a personal feeling of not wanting to be too attached. As I mentioned in the podcast, I don’t feel an overwhelming concern with my individual privacy if it means living in a safer world. I don’t think anyone is looking at me personally, but rather as a part of the whole or even an anonymous individual. Even if they know all of my information including my name and address, etc. they still don’t know me personally so the information they find will still seem anonymous.
• In choosing between your personal privacy and technological convenience, which side do you choose? Is this an easy choice or a touch decision (or it doesn’t really matter to you)?
  • I choose technological convenience. This is an easy choice for me for the reasons discussed in the previous question. Though my decision is founded more on the basis of national security than technological convenience. For example, I am very willing to allow people to know certain things about me if it means they will be able to stop a possible terrorist attack from occurring. I also recognize that my view is coming from the fact that I feel I have nothing to hide. I was moved by the point about giving immigrants a platform to have completely encrypted messaging so they can communicate with their families.  I recognize that if I were in a more compromised position, privacy would probably mean much more to me. I am fortunate that I don’t have anything to hide and can choose convenience because of that.

• Regardless of what you believe about your personal privacy, what do you think about privacy in general? Is privacy something worth fighting for or protecting? Or is it a relic of a by-gone era?
  • I think a level of privacy is always worth fighting for. I am not an advocate of giving up privacy in total. However, I think it is more of a compromise than a choice. We are never going to have full privacy again but we will also never be willing to give up any level of privacy so we will have to give and take as a society to get to a level that makes the most sense. I think that level will always be changing based on the innovation in technology and therefore this debate will never go away.

Reading 10: Trolling

 

Before doing these readings I understood a troll to be someone who basically is a nuisance online and points out any mistakes that bloggers, writers, programmers, or anyone posting on the internet makes. But these readings have shown me that sometimes trolling goes beyond being a nuisance or embarrassing the poster, and actually can be extremely harmful and cause irreparable damage for those on the receiving side of things, like it did for Zoe Quinn throughout the GamerGate experience. In the first reading about Ira Glass, she explains an experience she had in which a troll actually created a twitter profile for her dead father just to attack her even deeper than all the other trolls who were already calling her fat, insulting her personal character and writing, and even encouraging suicide. This type of behavior can cause people serious damage and could inflict mental illness. Though of course she had a very difficult time with all the trolls, Ira had such a strong personality and confidence beforehand that she was able to see past what the trolls were saying about her. For someone who is struggling with self confidence or finding meaning in life however, comments like these could put them over the edge and definitely should not be tolerated. Because of this potential to hurt someone’s life in more ways than one, I think websites have a responsibility to patrol their comments and ensure that users are not being targeted personally in ways that go beyond normal debate and discussion over opinions. It would be ideal if everyone using the internet was mature enough to control their feelings and only comment in regards to the actual content that someone posted, but unfortunately trolls often take things beyond that and feel they need to go out of their way to ruin someone’s life just for having a different opinion then them. In Ira’s article, when she spoke to the man who had created the fake dad account and then reached out to her to apologize, she asked him questions about his initial need to troll her and eventually he ended up admitting to being a misogynist even though he never would have thought of himself in that way, only that he disliked her as a woman. Because of these bigger issues and deeper meanings coming into play in the context of online comments, trolling can get out of hand very fast which is was necessitates the need for patrolling. I don’t think that real name policies would fix this problem. One of the points in The Coral Project article was that harassment and discrimination are cultural problems not just online. I think this is important because we wouldn’t have a trolling problem online if people didn’t act like that in real life to begin with. Better education on ending harassment both on and offline could help to reduce harmful trolling. There also are too many reasons that identity protection online is necessary, and forcing the use of real names would cause too much damage in other ways. Rather than decreasing anonymity, we should try to get to the source of the issue and stop the causes of trolling, including poor social constructs that allow us to feel okay attacking someone’s deepest feelings. After reading what some of these people went through with trolling I now think it is a major problem on the internet. My only experience with it would be in highschool when a platform called “Formspring” was really popular. It was basically a blog that would let users post anonymous questions or comments that you could choose to answer and publish. It was great for the popular girls who got a lot of compliments and questions about how to be more like them, but for everyone else it seemed to just be an open invitation for any insult or bullying you could imagine. It seems that now a days however, every social media platform or website has some sort of mechanism that can be used in this way to make anonymous comments whether they’re harmful or not. I would try to handle this by decreasing my activity on these sites or restricting comments to only those I approve of.

Reading 09: Fake News

The phenomena of Fake News seems to consist of websites creating articles with little or no validity but that seem real and interesting enough to get people to click on them for the sole purpose of being exposed to advertisements. The problem with this is companies like Facebook and Google’s size and presence in our everyday lives. Because of this, many people get all of their news from one of these sources so they have no other knowledge on the subject except what they’re getting from the one source. For example if I saw an article on Facebook with a fabricated quote from Hillary Clinton, but I don’t look at any other articles on the matter, I have no way of knowing that that isn’t true. Therefore I think technology companies do have a responsibility to suppress fake news, especially because they know their size and strength and should be able to see how harmful mass amounts of fake news can be. Depending on the subject matter I think Fake News can be harmless, but with topics like the presidential election, Fake News exposed to billions of users can have a very dangerous effect. The ability to sway people’s opinions to the point of changing their vote based on fabricated news is a scary thought.

Given the possible ramifications I think it is justified for these private entities to censor information. I’m not sure how effective they will be however. The methods described in the article seem vague and the fake news outlets will no doubt be able to adapt to squeeze through the protections put in place. The flagging of links by scoping comments seems like a very surface level approach and with the volume of data on Facebook I don’t see it ending the problem.

Personally, I find out about a lot of news from social media like Facebook. The trending news posts that show up in the top right corner often catch my eye, especially if it is something important like a terrorist attack or impending severe weather. Usually I use this as my first stop though, I scan the headlines and if I see something that seems important I’ll google it. I didn’t realize that Google was as affected by Fake News as Facebook however. I tend to click on sites like CNN or The New York Times, which I generally trust. I took to heart the point mentioned in the Snowden article about using more than one source for news. By looking through multiple news sources, you are able to pick out the facts that are a common thread through all of them making them more likely to be valid. If you find something in only one source however and there are no posts that corroborate it, you should be more skeptical. I will definitely keep this in mind going forward because I think I have been naive thus far in taking news as true without questioning it. I think truth still stands a chance in this society because of this ability to look at aggregate information and compare. In addition, we have more recordings and ways of validating quotes and such today than we have ever had before. I think the rise of videos in the news rather than articles makes truth much more attainable.

Online Advertising

 

I think as long as users are informed of a the ways in which a company is using their data, or have access to that information, it is ethical for companies to gather and use consumer data. As mentioned in some of the articles, we, the users, get to experience many free services in exchange for our data. I’m sure most people my age would be much more upset by having to pay to use Facebook or their email than they would be by having some of their habits monitored. This may be a generational difference, I think my parents and people their age have a harder time accepting this monitoring because they did not grow up with it. However, they also use social media much less than people my age so there is probably less data collected on them.

Companies definitely need to have an information privacy policy however or disclose to their users in some way, how they will be using the data they collect. This hardly means that users will be deterred from using that service however. For the number of services we use everyday, a very small fraction of users actually look at the privacy policy. Every time I am emailed or notified that snapchat has updated its privacy policy, I simply click agree without reading through it. I would bet that most users do the same. It’s not that I’m ignorant, I just know that I will continue using the service regardless and I would probably rather not know what they’re doing with my data. I feel almost desensitized to this type of monitoring and therefore find it unnecessary to determine how every service I use is using my data. In the case of Target revealing a sixteen year old’s pregnancy to her father before she did, it was a very unfortunate situation, however, the truth would have come out eventually. And, the father probably shouldn’t have been reading the daughter’s mail in the first place.

I don’t always like what comes up on my social media. It does create an uncomfortable feeling when I get an advertisement for say, a specific pair of sunglasses that I know for a fact I only spoke about out-loud in person with my sister. Realizing that my phone is listening to me is not ideal, but I recognize that my information is used in an aggregated form and the advertisers aren’t looking at what I am buying personally or judging me based on my online activity. They are analyzing me automatically for only the purpose of making money.

I think it’s ethical to use ad blockers if it makes you feel safer but I personally don’t because I don’t see enough of a reason. One of my professors last semester did an interesting experiment in class where he asked the students to raise their hand if they would be willing to release their social security number for a free chipotle burrito. The majority of the class raised their hand. I think this illustrates to what extent people are age are unaffected by their privacy.

Edward Snowden

From the readings and in your opinion, is Edward Snowden a hero or a traitor? Should the US government pardon him for any possible crimes or should they pursue extradition and prosecution for treason?

• What exactly did he leak and how did he expose that information?
• Regardless of the legality of his actions, is what he did ethical and moral?
• Utimately, is what Snowden did beneficial to the public or did he harm the security of the United States and its allies? Personally, how have these revelations impacted you (or not) and your views on government, national security, encryption, and technology in general?

In my opinion, Edward Snowden is a traitor. The readings pointed out that although his purpose was to stop illegal surveillance methods by the US spy agencies, he went about it very poorly. He leaked millions of documents showing US spy activities and how they use information which is not only dangerous to the US, also shows that he did not put in sufficient time and effort. He didn’t go through and pick important points or create a complete report, he simply released all this information hoping others would use it to draw the same conclusions he had. I don’t believe what he did is ethical because I think many more people had the potential of being hurt from his release of the information than would have if the government continued their surveillance practices without public knowledge. Though it may not be completely right of the government to act in the way they did without disclosing their actions to the public, they were doing so in order to protect the country from outside threats and national security issues. What Snowden did was disrupting the government’s protection strategy and he did it just to expose them.

Ultimately, what Edward Snowden did was more detrimental to the security of the United States and its allies than it was beneficial to the public. Though his intentions may have been good (which I am not sure they were), he caused more harm than good. If he had issues with the way things were being run, he should have brought it up within the agency and kept confidential matters confidential. By going outside the system and exposing everything, he may have shed light on things he didn’t even mean to, that could have and probably did cause innumerable issues for the government. These revelations have not made a big impact on my views on the government, national security, encryption, and technology in general, which is an outcome shared by many Americans, according to the article by Orin Kerr. About half of Americans responding to polls on the issue were not concerned about government surveillance practices. After all the trouble Snowden went to and the harm he caused the government, he made a relatively small impact on the American people, the exact audience he was trying to affect. In my opinion, Snowden should be punished for his actions, as he acted illegally and harmed our national security.

Project 02 Reflection

I think the most important part of the guide we constructed is how to navigate the career fair. I personally experienced a lot of anxiety before my first career fair just because I wasn’t sure exactly what girls usually wear or what I was supposed to talk to these strangers about. I have also had underclassmen ask me plenty of questions before their first career fair about proper etiquette and conversation topics. I think having known some of these tips before hand would have definitely been helpful and eased my nerves. I think Notre Dame does a great job of exposing us to real world business situations, but these are more common in junior and senior level classes. I think having some of those opportunities earlier would make the younger students feel more confident being able to go in and talk to potential employers. I also think the section about using your connections is important. At first I felt like networking was cheating and that using personal connections I had to get a job was unfair to the other students. I learned through my internship however, that this is actually an essential part of establishing your career and everybody does it. Reaching out to people you’ve made connections with in the past shouldn’t make you feel guilty, you should consider it a necessary step on your path.

I think colleges should prepare their students for interviews as well as teaching them the traditional material in their area of studying. In this day in age, it is likely that the majority of people in college, studying to get a degree, are doing so for the purpose of getting a job afterward. If that is the case, wouldn’t it make sense for us to teach them the skills necessary to get a job? Coming from the business school, I feel Notre Dame does a great job of offering us the opportunities to learn these skills. The student simply needs to be on the lookout for a chance to learn and they will find it. I cannot speak for the computer science program however. I am not sure if they have the same kinds of opportunities available, although they are going for many of the same jobs.

I also think that reading the case interview books before interviewing for consulting positions is one of the most helpful tips we can give students. I was never told this until a class I was in fall semester of my senior year, by which time I was done interviewing. Luckily, I had a family friend who was kind enough to practice case interviews with me so I had plenty of preparation, but I think students would feel better having read these books and done some practice on their own before turning to adults for help.

In my experience, the case interview was pretty natural for me as I thought of it just like I would logically approach any homework problem. I found the behavioral interview more difficult because of the fact that you have to quickly recall stories about yourself that demonstrate a certain skill or situation. It also felt like bragging to me, which was uncomfortable. Because of this I think I would recommend that younger students practice these behavioral interviews with the career center or ask their family for stories about themselves that may be useful so they don’t get stuck.

Mission Critical Systems

 

The readings described the technical root cause of the Challenger disaster to be the malfunction of O-rings in colder temperatures. This ring did not seal properly in colder conditions and rather than reengineering a new model, they added a back up in the hopes that if one ring failed the other would still seal. Of course this didn’t work and the o-ring eroded, allowing a stream of hot gas to ignite a fuel tank, causing the explosion. Beyond the technical issues however, were the ethical ones. A team of engineers refused to give their approval necessary for the go-ahead for the mission. Because of this NASA turned to their superiors and gained the approval they needed. Following the disaster, some of these engineers, including Boisjoly, shared their notes and experiences of these night-before meetings with the public showing that the o-ring issue had been discovered and covered up by NASA. I believe Boisjoly was justified in sharing this information with the public to ensure that in the future, discovered problems are addressed, however I believe it would have been more impactful before the event occurred. If Boisjoly had been able to release his findings to the press the night before the launch, he would have been seen as more of a protector than a whistle blower. For obvious logistical and publicity reasons however, this was not possible. I do not believe his company was justified in retaliating against him because he was clearly not in the wrong here. I think the company would have a better public reputation if they had come forward with him and supported him showing their quest to diminish the possibility of this kind of occurrence in the future, similar to how the GM CEO Mary Barra called on employees to come directly to her if they experienced opposition to addressing a problem they have discovered. I think this approach by companies shows much more maturity and commitment to not only the customers but to humans, especially in a field where mistakes like this are literally life and death. There is a heightened responsibility to address mistakes before they take lives and anyone who tries to do that should be thanked rather than retaliated against. Whistle blowing seems almost like martyrdom to me in these cases. These people have given up their jobs and in some cases, most of their lives just to protect the safety of the public, yet they are turned against and mistreated. A cultural shift in companies will be necessary to ensure that fatal mistakes like these are not made in the future. My final thought is that note taking is much more than a tedious task and keeping detailed records can save your reputation or provide evidence in cases such as these. Though we hope we will never face a situation in which we have to justify our whistle blowing, providing first hand narratives is a good way to do it. Hopefully NASA and all engineers have learned from these events and acknowledge the necessity of tying minor issues to human lives in order to understand their severity.