Benefits and harms!
Computer Innovation!
A computing innovation is an innovation that includes a computer or program code as an integral part of its functionality.
Its benefits are that it has improved machines, and therefore saved many lives. It has also improved communication so that we can contact anyone, anywhere, almost instantaneously. With this improved communication, it has made it easier for artists to share and sell their works. Engineers use computing innovations to collect data and design products.
Computing innovation has had many benefits, but has also had multiple harms. Computing innovation has led to digital divide: unequal access to technology despite increasing importance of it. It has also led to computing bias: technology today can reflect current human biases, reinforcing and perpetuating inequality and stereotypes. Additionally, it has led to legal and ethical concerns regarding copyright laws. Finally, it has created new malware risks in everyday computer use, such as hacking or viruses.
Although computing innovation has had both benefits and harms, it has also had some effects beyond what it was intended for. The World Wide Web was originally for the scientific community to share information in a faster and easier way, but has changed greatly since. While targeted advertisement is intended to help businesses, it also collects private information, leading to potential abuse. Due to computer bias, machine learning and data mining may unintentionally contribute to discrimination despite having benefitted many fields.
Digital Divide
Digital divide is the unequal access to technology despite increasing importance of technology. Multiple factors contribute to digital divide: demographic, socioeconomic situation, and geographic area.
Digital Divide is affected by demographic, as younger people will be more comfortable using technology as well as understand it more than older people. Additionally, people with higher levels of education tend to use technology and the internet easier and more often than people with lower levels. In certain regions, women have less access to technology than men.
Socioeconomic situation also contributes to digital divide. People with higher incomes are more able to purchase and maintain devices than people with lower incomes. Even if lower income people are able to afford the initial cost of a device, they still need the ability to repair or upgrade the device if it gets too old.
Geographic area affects digital divide as well. Some countries censor content on the internet, leading to limited information and contact. Some countries or parts of countries also have little access to the internet or technology and are therefore at a disadvantage in this quickly advancing world for simply living in the wrong place.
Computer Bias
A bias is a tendency or inclination that is unfair or predjudicial. Everyone has biases, but some biases can be harmful to society. Computing innovations use data from the world around them, data which is chosen by people with biases to use.
Bias can be seen in all levels of development, from the brainstorming to the finished product. In computer bias, bias is written into the algorithm itself or in the data used. In criminal risk assessment tools, which are used to determine the probability of a person committing another crime, which is then used to influence decisions during court. These algorithms aare trained to make decisions based on historical data, which is historically biased against certain people from certain groups as risks. Facial recognition systems might not work because of biases written into their algorithms. Recrutiing algorithms are used by companies to sort through many applicants, but some can be biased towards certain races or genders.
To prevent computer bias, diverse and representative data sets can be used to help reduce bias in machine learning. Reviewing algorithms for potential biases and testing them on diverse data sets can also help to identify any biases. Incorporating fairness metrics like fair pay among demographics and equal opportunity as well as increasing diversity in the tech industry would help work against computer bias.
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is the practice of getting a large amount of information from people on the internet. Crowdsourcing allows for people on the internet to act as a crowd who's suggestions and opinions are heard by companies and used. Although crowdsourcing is used to solve problems in companies, it also has some concerning issues. Some information is taken from people using the internet without them knowing. Personal information is used for targeted advertisements, which is beneficial to certain companies, but also shares personal or private information without permission.
Legal and Ethical Issues
With the development of computing innovation, legal and ethical concerns are increasing. An area of concern is intellectual property and copyright. Intellectual property is inventions or creations that are used in commerce. Pictures, digital art, and written stories or documents are all the intellectual property of whoever made them. On the internet, it is extremely easy to access, copy, and distribute intellectual property. Protecting intellectual property is increasingly difficult due to computing innovation. It is important to protect intellectual property as it helps foster innovation, as creators get credit and possible financial benefit from their work.
Copyright is a way to protect intellectual property on the internet. Copyright is the legal right that a creator of a work has to it. There are two types of rights: economic rights: rights to financial benefits from the use of the work, and moral rights: the right to claim authorship or to prevent harmful changes. With copyright, you need permission to use content from another creator before its use. Although copyright has its own issues with misuse, it has benefitted many creators by allowing them to receive credit and financial benefit from their work.
Plagiarism is stealing the content of someone else and claiming it as your own. Simply not citing a source of an original idea or phrase counts as plagiarism, which can have serious consequences. Although plagiarism may be done accidentally or unknowingly, it can still affect the content creators by having their hard work taken without permission or credit.
There are some ways to use the content of others without any legal issues. For example: the Creative Commons license is a public copyright license that creators use if they give others the right to use their work. Fair Use is another exception, where copyrighted material can be used without permission for limited purposes like news-reporting or education. Fair Use is not always reliable, as it is difficult to determine what is eligible. Open sourcing allows for work to be freely shared and modified. Open sourcing generally relates to software and code. Open access is research that is available to the public and is often free of copyright.
There are a few other legal and ethical concerns besides copyright and IP. Computing innovations can cause potential harm besides plagiarism. Some streaming software is illegal as it can violate copyright law, spread viruses, and can also deprive creators of the revenue they receive from their work. Some computing innovations that monitor user activities or track personal data lead to ethical issues of privacy and personal data use. Digital divide also raises ethical concerns. The internet can be used for good, but there can be misinformation spread that is harmful to people's well-being. Some other issues are how far free speech can go on the internet, as well as AI art, which brings up issues of art theft and biased computing.
Safe Computing
Safe computing is the combination of computer software, security settings, and practices used to stay safe on the internet. Computers and computer systems often store the personal data of users. Search engines keep track of your search history in order to show you ads based on them. This is known as targeted marketing. Safe computing finds ways to either protect your private information or protect you from harm.
Personally Identifiable Information or PII, is the information used to identify you, including your age, phone number, social security number, financial information, etc. There are benefits to allowing websites and software to access your personal information. It can be used to enhance your experience online by connecting you with products you're looking for or friends on social media. It can also be used to recommend media that you'd enjoy in entertainment applications like TikTok or YouTube. The bad side of collecting personal information is that without protection, the information can be exploited. Some information like your location could be used for stalking, or some personal information can be used to steal your identity.
Some other ways you can be put at risk online is through posting on social media. The information that you put online can be used to find out more about you. You could accidentally reveal too much about yourself. Other times, messages that you send or post in bad taste could be seen by employers or admission officers and ruin their first impression of you.
Dangers of computing are viruses and malware. Malware is short for malicious software, which is intended to damage or take control of a computing system. Phishing is the practice of scamming users into providing personal information while pretending to be a trusted group. Keyloggins is a practice that tracks keystrokes, and rogue access points are WiFi networks that have the potential to be intercepted, analyzed, and modified. The main way to stay safe on the internet is to stay wary and avoid suspicious links and downloads.
Ways to have safe computing are setting up authentication measures like passwords and multi-factor authentication. Passwords should be easy to remember but hard to guess. Encryption is another way to protect data and is the process of encoding data to prevent unwanted access. Certain software help defend against malware. Firewalls monitor internet traffic and block unsafe websites as well as protect devices. Making backups of important data can help with recovery from a virus attack. The greatest way to stay safe above all, though, is to be aware.