Digital divide is the idea that people have differing access to information technology for reasons beyond their control. Evidence of digital divide includes global divide which supports higher access to wealthier contries with good IT infrustructor, English as primary language, good education, and modern culture. Another evidence is social divide that supports higher access to younger and more educated people.
Globalization promotes world wide networks of businesses and markets for greater mobility of good, services, and capital due to the rapidly decreasing cost of information technology. By fostering greater competition around the world, higher quality products will be developed and poor countries will prosper from new businesses. As world businesses grow, companies will be comprised of multinational teams, helping companies around the world reduce their labor costs. As a result of the increase in global jobs, the world will be more economically stable and the standard of living will increase.
I believe in 20 years from now, globalization and telework will increase even more to allow workers to work remotely around the world. Also communication technology will promote better, faster, and more cheaper services to support international businesses. However, I also believe privacy issues will also increase, as social networks develop even more.
I hope to be able to work both in Japan and Canada, where I can keep develop and maintain good relationships with friends and co-workers through telecommunication.
Pishing is the act of stealing important information by faking websites to look like the real legal ones. I believe it can be used to trick web users very easily…
National ID’s makes government data mining simpler and allows a single of point of failure to hackers. ID generation algorithm is hackable and fakable…
Digital cash makes transactions more convinient. In Japan, it is possible to use cell-phones as a wallet to pay for train and purchase items in a convinient store. However, this method is vulnerable to hackers…
With Google secretly gathering information about users without their consent, it has brought much suscipicion about their actual intent. After some research, I found out that Google and Verizon are partnering up to develop a new form of Internet where they can greatly control all user-content and censor any material that they wish. This form of suppression on society can be a new form of dictatorship over freedom of speech and expression of all citizens in our society.
I believe that in today’s Information Age there should be at least some form of informal consent given to people to inform them that they are accessing/using their private information, regardless of the reasons in not doing so. This way it will ensure that the privacy of others is protected and the trust between corporations and consumers of society is maintained. Although too much privacy may be harmful to society, the benefits of privacy still overcomes the harms of not having any privacy at all. If people have to think twice before purchasing a type of product or participating in a certain activity, in fear of spreading bad rumors to society, then their freedom is being taken away from them as they constanly fear about being exposed of everything that they do daily. Unless it can be proven that a certian product or activity is illegal or harmful, people should be given the right to protect their privacy from intruders and act according to their own will. Thus, in order to be free, people need to maintain their rights to their own privacy.
Today many people spend hours of their lives on MSN, Facebook, and online games and gambling, especially the younger generation. Too much time spent in front of the computer can cause isolation from friends, family, other forms of social contract, as gamers pursue to advance in online games like StarCraft and WoW. In some extreme cases, people have died as a result of prolonged sessions sitting in front of the computer. In Asian countries, statistics have shown that 2.4%, aged 9 to 39 suffer from game addiction. Should the government be reponsible for putting restrictions to the amount of playing time to game addicts and provide more education about the dangers of internet and game addiction?
After reading about the history of Facebook and how Mark Zuckerburg betrayed his team to take most of the ownership of Facebook, I have detected three main violations to the ACM code of ethics.
ACM code 1.6, which is to give proper credit for intellectual property, was violated by Mark Zuckerburg as he denied his team mates their contributions to the project and the use of their ideas in making Facebook. Although, Mark Zuckerburg claims that it was his idea to launch the site to a larger audience, it does not give him the exclusive right to use the team member’s intellectual property rights and later denying or diluting their contributions to Facebook. In addition, he also violated ACM code 1.3, to be honest and trustworthy, as he used his friends as a means to an end, and ACM code 1.7, honour confidentiality, as he exposed private information of users collected in databases to advertising companies, without the consent of the users. Thus, I believe that Mark Zuckerberg actions were wrong according to Kantianism. However, his actions may be justified if the launch of Facebook has improved the total happiness of society by allowing more efficient and convinient means of communciation or “social networking”, according to utilitariansm. Therefore, it is difficult to judge whether Mark’s actions were good or bad. One thing for certain, is that, although their exist some good in the consequences of his actions, the means he took was evil. It can be described like almost a cover story to hide his darker motives and intentions of Facebook, as we may never know how many more people he will betray.
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