Reading 13: CS for all

Over the past ten to fifteen years, the computing industry, along with the field of computer science, has experienced a serious increase in public exposure and appreciation. It wasn’t long ago that people who used computers–especially people who programmed computers–were looked down upon as recluses and nerds. While arguably negative stereotypes do remain, the rise of modern tech behemoths like Google, Facebook,  and Amazon, and the rise of the young, hip silicon valley tech culture has shifted public opinion quite a bit. Coding is now a portal to a new kind of lifestyle, and the key to more economic prosperity. Coding is now in fashion, parents want their kids to learn it, schools want to teach it, and some have even called programming “the new literacy.” That last statement sounds a little hyperbolic, but I think it is actually true in some ways. I don’t think it is true in the sense that people need to be familiar with for loops, conditionals, and variables in order to be an active, contributing member of our economy. However, the necessity of technical knowledge is spreading into more industries than ever before, some of the highest paying jobs now rely heavily on tech skills, and when it comes to entrepreneurship, tech infrastructure is becoming more and more important.

Since the benefit of a computer science education in our current economy is clear, some people think that programming courses should become part of the standard curriculum at schools. While I don’t think extensive, compulsory classes would be very beneficial, I do think one introductory class to the computing industry might allow students to decide whether they want to continue studying the material in their future. I think one class that covered very introductory programming syntax in an easy language along with more higher level material would be a good start. There are also plenty of learning resources on-line, so the course could also guide those who are interested in the right direction to continue learning. After this class, I think students should be able to decide whether they wanted to keep learning or not, and more advanced courses could be offered as electives. Currently, I think there are many people who love to work in the computing industry but don’t know it because they were never exposed to anything but old stereotypes. An intro class could solve this, and potentially help fix diversity issues in the industry as well.

The reason I don’t think there should be more compulsory courses in computing is because I am a firm believer that the industry is not for everybody. Some people are definitely more analytical than others, and there are some people who probably could, but just really don’t like the idea of working with code / computers all day. That is okay, and probably for the best. There are people who don’t want to code, people who can be average coders, and a few people who can be great coders. I think all are necessary in our economy today, and we should expose people to everything and let them decide what they want to do.

 

Reading 12: Piracy

As students in University, most of my classmates and I are no strangers to the world of piracy. Movies and music can be expensive to purchase, and regardless, it’s often easier to just google search a free movie stream as opposed to actually entering your credit card information / finding a legitimate way to view whatever content you are trying to view.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act–a law made effective in 1998–criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM) that control access to copyrighted works. It also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself. Essentially, this means piracy is illegal. The DMCA also contains the “Safe harbor provisions,” which protect online service providers from liability if their users take part in pirating copyrighted material.

Personally, I don’t think it is ethical for users to download or share copyrighted material, though I do it fairly frequently. I think the creators of the content have every right to have their material purchased as opposed to pirated–they put in the time and the energy, and I should pay for that. The money users purchase content with also serves as an incentive for creators to continue making new, entertaining content. The content I pirate most frequently is movies, and the reason is that I just don’t think there is a price point I think is necessarily fair for most of the movies I want to watch. When new movies come out, they go straight to the movie theatres, which in my hometown charge upwards of fifteen dollars for a ticket. To me, the content is not worth that much money, and so I end up streaming it online. If there were an easier way to access new movies, at a price that I think is fair, I would go out of my way to use it so the creators can get the money I think they deserve. Take Netflix and Spotify for example. I think both of these services provide great access to content at a price I think is fair, so I pay for them and use them. Obviously these services don’t prevent all piracy, but I think it prevents a large number of people who would have pirated because it would have been the easiest, most reasonably priced option.

I do not think piracy can ever be prevented–as long as people can obtain piece of copyrighted content, they can figure out a way to upload and share it. Do I think Piracy is a problem? I can’t really tell. The music, movie, television, and gaming industries–the most frequent victims of piracy–seem to be doing pretty well, and there is no way to tell how the absence of piracy may affect their business. I think there is an argument that to an extent piracy helps artists spread their material and increase their popularity, increasing their sales potential in the future. Take the music industry for example. Many artists these days have completely forgone trying to sell their music and end up giving it away for free. This increases their popularity, and increases their earnings potential for their live tours–which is where they end up making most of their money. Obviously this example doesn’t translate to other entertainment industries, but I think in a way it shows that maybe free content can be beneficial in the long run.

 

Reading 11: Self-Driving Cars

Almost everybody within the past fifty years has dreamt of self-driving cars.  Instead of spending hours crouched over a wheel to get home from work and risking death by car crash on a daily basis, people with self-driving cars will be able to recline and watch a movie, get home much quicker, and not have to worry about dying. Until recently, the dream was far from reality, many approaches involved installing hardware on roads or hard-coding every possible scenario the car may encounter. With the advance of machine learning however, the possibility of safe and cheap self-driving technology is rapidly approaching, and according to some is more or less here. However, there are a lot of ethical and legal questions that need to be answered before these advances make their way into the public’s hands.

Based on my understanding, there are three main arguments as to why people want self-driving cars:  safety, convenience, and savings. As for the first reason, there are usually anywhere from 30,000 to 40,000 deaths a year caused by car accidents in America. Almost all of these can probably be attributed to human error. It’s not hard to imagine that with advanced self-driving cars, this number will decrease significantly, and possibly even reach zero. As for the second reason, traffic would probably decrease significantly along with commute times, and people would be able to spend the time they would have spent driving either relaxing or doing something productive. Finally, the most prevalent job in America would become entirely unnecessary, resulting in huge cost savings for retailers and consumers–we would no longer need to pay truck drivers. As with most things, there are counter-arguments to all of these popular reasons to produce self-driving cars.

First of all, there is the ethical question regarding deaths caused by autonomous vehicles. If the number of deaths isn’t reduced to absolutely zero, there would inevitably be a number of tricky lawsuits and undirected anger caused by these vehicles. In a scenario where a collision is inevitable, should a car choose to incur the least loss of life, or let something else decide. Who is to blame, the tech companies? The government? These are very difficult and un-avoidable questions that I cannot begin to answer. However, I think it is clear that deaths would be reduced significantly, and that should be kept in mind whenever addressing these issues. In my opinion, these questions will either be answered, or glossed over sooner than later by a government with more autonomy than ours. I can easily imagine a country like China or Singapore allowing the use of self-driving cars as the ethical issues can be suppressed more easily than in the US. And when this happens, I think the benefits of these vehicles will be clear, and other countries will be almost forced to adopt them, with proper legislation.

Obviously there will be a major economic impact with self-driving cars. A large number of people will have a modest economic benefit, and a smaller number of people will have a more severe, negative economic benefit–mostly truck drivers, transport companies, etc… Socially, I’m sure there will be a number of significant impacts. The concept of a “commute” will be transformed from a boring, tedious experience to basically the new entertainment industry. People will no longer have to worry about cabs, and drinking while being driven may be legalized. I’m sure a number of people will create “house-cars” and live a nomadic existence in their self-driving home/vehicle. The possibilities seem endless.

Personally, I would like a self-driving car, but I would also like there to be roads dedicated to just manually-controlled cars. I think driving manually can be a really enjoyable and liberating activity. I also occasionally ride a motorcycle purely for fun–not to go somewhere, but just to experience riding it. I think it would be a shame if this autonomy was lost due to self-driving cars, but I’m confident it would not be. Too many people probably agree with me. It’s difficult to predict if / when self-driving cars will become commonplace, but I’m confident it will happen soon, one way or another.

Project 03: Reflection

• Do the revelations in Vault 7 influence your views on government surveillance? Do you wish for organizations like Wikileaks to continue exposing secrets like this in order to inform the public, or do you believe that “ignorance is bliss”?

Personally, the revelations in Vault 7 do influence my views on government surveillance. I firmly believe the technology individuals use — especially Internet of Things devices placed within homes — should be secure, that is no person or government should have the tools to hack them and expose sensitive information. I’m glad Wikileaks released their information in vault 7, even if it wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone.  At the very least it will raise awareness of security vulnerabilities, and hopefully lead to safer, more secure technology.

• How do you separate the “message” from the “messenger”? In the case of Wikileaks, can you? Would you rather trust Wikileaks or say the US government?

I think this is one of the biggest issues I have with Wikileaks. Julian Assange seems to spin a lot of the released material in accordance with his own agenda. I would still trust Wikileaks over the US government, especially because many of the documents released by them belong to the government. Ideally, however, Assange would make his role almost transparent. That means minimal contact with the press, other than what is absolutely necessary to gain an audience. It also means minimal interpretation of the provided documents. They should be provided to the public in an unbiased manner. This should be balanced with proper vetting of provided documents to make sure they don’t put any individuals in harms way.

• Finally, when is whistleblowing the ethical or right thing to do? Is “honesty always the best policy” or are there times to remain silent? Can transparency be forced upon others? Is it desirable?

I think whistleblowing is ethical in certain scenarios and not in others. If there are things going on in an organization that put the public’s safety or privacy in harms way, than I think it is justified, especially if what is going on can be put to a stop. The whistleblowing can be a catalyst for positive change. However I think some cases of whistleblowing are superfluous. I don’t think it is completely necessary in scenarios where the contentious  action is over, and cannot be changed, and there is no way for the release of information to improve the future.

In today’s society, I am starting to think that transparency *can* be forced upon others. It is clear that it is very difficult to keep any documents private within a moderately sized organization, and so people should assume any wrongdoing will be discovered eventually. Statistically, I think there will always be one rogue agent willing to smuggle documents. As long as the internet exists, they will be published somewhere. I think this can be desirable if the transparency is achieved in a way that protects individual people.

Reading 10: Trolling

If you asked me, the term “to troll” most nearly means “to provoke.” Obviously, people have been provoking one another for a really long time, but only with the rise of the internet and internet culture did the term “trolling” really come into it’s own. Trolling, as it is used today, represents a wide array of behaviors that range from teasing and sarcasm to outright aggression, and the fact that it can be done anonymously and remotely adds to its novelty. People can “troll” other people by misleading them, playing dumb, making up lies, or attacking them. No matter how vicious the attack, however, the aggressor can always use his/her anonymity to claim it was all tongue-in-cheek. I would say the main cause of trolling is the advent of computer networks and anonymous forums. For the first time in human history, a large number of people were allowed to say whatever they wanted with absolutely no consequences, and so obviously some of the users of these platforms are going to do some questionable things. In terms of effects, there is the obvious negative consequences of cyber bullying, a category under which a large amount of “trolling” falls.  In general however, I would say the worst consequences of trolling fall upon the people who have no idea what it is, and this in turn can affect the rest of the world.

For many tech-savvy millennials who have been browsing the internet for a decade or more, “trolling” behavior is very obvious most of the time, and no matter how aggressive the trolling gets, it can be pretty easily brushed to the side. Some of the most notorious cases of trolling have been created on the website 4chan. There was the fake ad they created advertising the iphone’s ability to be charged in the microwave, and the “plastic bag challenge,” where participant’s put a plastic bag over their head for as long as possible out of solidarity with animals affected by pollution. To many people familiar with the internet, these are pretty clear attempts to bait people into doing something dumb. I think it is also a way to see how much “real world” influence occupants of this “fake world” can create. The problem is, there are many people today–probably the majority of internet users–who can’t tell what is sincere and what is tongue in cheek, and recently, this has become a problem for the whole world. The_Donald is now one of the most popular subreddits on Reddit, and in my opinion had a large influence on the media. For the most part, this subreddit was started by members of 4chan, who in my opinion recognized that Trump was a terrible candidate, but wanted to see how far his campaign could make it, and so they started “trolling”. People like this created a lot of what is referred to now as “fake news,” which many people cannot discern from “real news.” What I’m trying to say is that internet “trolls” are trying to see how much erratic behavior they can create in the real world, and since the internet is so pervasive now, they are getting much further than ever before. I think Trump is president because of trolls.

In terms of what companies can do, or should do, to stymy “trolling” or online harassment–it is difficult to say. I really think it would be hard to do anything without potentially restricting free speech or censoring the internet. In my opinion, internet companies should make it easier for people to decide what is sincere and harmless vs. what is not. Maybe give credibility rankings to news sites, or just provide a general education in regards to the internet and much of the behavior that goes on within it.