The Gospel Truth

Honesty is the most important principle in professional ethics. Most ethical behaviors stem from being honest. With honesty comes an accurate representation of work performed for an employer. An accurate description of a potential or current employee’s skill set would always be provided. Recognition will be given to others’ contributions where recognition is due. Any potential clients or consumers of a product would have confidence that the product will do what is advertised, and not anything harmful. Any unethical behavior of a company would be reported and handled in appropriate ways. There are other ways to behave ethically, but honest behavior is the foundation for the most important elements of acting ethically.

The Balance of the Force

Balance is the most important part of leading a happy life. It doesn’t matter how important or good an activity is, when too much time is spent on it, it will not bring happiness. Work addictions can be just as serious as gaming and gambling addictions. Not giving yourself enough time to relax or be with family is just as draining as not putting in enough effort into work or school. Sometimes we are required to go through periods of imbalance; going to any university means consistently long hours, especially when trying to get work experience on the side. These imbalances do not last forever, and they usually results in a better situation where a better balance and quality of life can be made. Even then, this balance does not come automatically, it must be fought for. If we do not make time for all the areas of our life that are important, we will not be happy.

I Hope This Stays Up Long Enough To Get Graded

Fire Power

The technology available to us today is an incredibly powerful tool for connecting people, but just like any tool, it can be used for many different purposes. Fire is incredibly useful in survival situations, can be quite destructive, and enhances recreation when camping. Similarly social media can be used for good, bad, and indifferent ends. Some of the dangers of social media include the fact that some degree of your information is available to the public and therefore vulnerable to identity thieves. Many people use social media to spread viruses for those who are not careful. Some people use social media to completely replace a normal healthy social life. There needs to be a balance in using social media, and all of these dangers should be avoided.

There are also many positive effects of social media. Most of these effects have to do with the fact that people are able to connect in ways and with people that they would not otherwise have access to. People can unite for shared causes and really make a change if enough people get involved. This self-organization can happen without an influence other than the people who want to connect reaching out to others. While this effect is well worth the risks, mostly social networking is used for purposes that are not inherently good or bad. Flash mobs can be organized using social media, but while they do not set out to hurt anyone, they don’t set out to accomplish anything either. Most people just use social networking for fun, and don’t get involved in any major causes further than occasionally liking a post. Social media can be a very powerful tool, but for the most part that’s not how it’s used.

Nerdier Than Thou

Research on why women do not choose computer science seems to point to the fact that women can feel threatened by science fiction and gaming related interests of others in the field. This seemed very strange based on my group of friends. This group is not a random sampling of the population, but many of my friends that are women are nerdier than many computer scientists I know. I did a quick survey of my Facebook feed to test if this observation was supportable and found that three times as many science fiction or gaming posts on my feed were generated by women than men in the last few days. Many of the women generating these posts are in other scientific fields. None are fellow computer scientists. Why are these women who are obviously not intimidated by science fiction and gaming culture still not choosing computer science?

The Source of Success

                The kinds of people that contribute to open-source software are the reason for its success. They self-motivate by definition; they start off contributing without compensation during their own free time. With this volunteer mentality also comes an inherent interest in the project they are working on, they chose to work on it in the first place. This interest not only fuels quality work, it encourages interaction with other contributors and gets them sharing and seeing many different styles of programming. Often sharing work in this way takes a thick skin when a contributor sees just how horrible their programming was, but this only encourages further improvement when taken the right way. Without programmers like these, Open source software would be dead. 

Missionary Digitization

New technologies have elicited a huge change in how the church is run. Many of these changes can be seen in missionary work, often with the same technology that was discouraged a short time ago. Missionaries are now allowed and encouraged to use Facebook and other social medial to further the work. Five years ago emailing home was a privilege for missionaries and time spent using this technology was very limited. Although social media was already well established by this point, going to any website that was not directly run by the church was prohibited (not even third party email). These policies were understandable; the internet can be a dangerous place if you are not careful. More and more of the missionary force made up of people who don’t know a world without these technologies. With this tech savvy missionaries can make these tools become very powerful while avoiding their spiritual dangers.

Legal Mumbo Jumbo

It is well known; there is a problem with the current system of patenting software. When there are companies whose sole income is suing and threatening to sue other companies based on these patents, it is intuitive that something is not right. What does that say about the legal system in general where this kind of problem can develop? Costs of these kinds of lawsuits are enough to put a small company out of business, and that’s if they win. There should be some kind of limit to these fees in these and other types of cases. The common image of a lawyer in our current legal system is that of a liar, someone who would do anything for a client if they are paid well enough. There should be some kind of incentive for lawyers to back away from clients that have no real case, but this may only drive up the price for these kinds of lawyers. The patent system along with the entire legal system has deep issues that will take time and enormous effort to resolve.

A Little Cuckoo

Breaking into someone else’s private property is wrong; it makes no difference if that property is in physical or digital form. There is a wide spectrum of those who disagree, from those in government who say that gathering non-sensitive information in certain circumstances is ethical, to hacktivists who believe that all information should be available to everyone. If there is one side of this spectrum that I relate to more, it’s the government. I have nothing to hide and if they can save lives I would usually volunteer for a certain amount of my online activities being tracked. However, I have two questions, how are they justifying this activity and where do they draw the line? If the justification involves the fact that cyber terrorists are using digital means to invade our privacy and attack our country, by that same argument we could also justify torture or other methods of terrorism to fight an enemy that uses those same tactics. How is non-sensitive data defined for the average citizen? Does the type of information gathered by the “Stellar Wind” program fit the description of non-sensitive? Who decided that? Going behind our backs for this kind of information gathering was not the right way to start this kind of a program.

                A group, while very different from those in the government, that also believes that digital information that can be monitored should be monitored are those who call themselves hactivists. These people believe that not only should they try to gather information, but that it should be made available to the general public no matter how sensitive it is. One justification for their actions is the fact that they are quite often only gathering information, not trying to harm or disable the computer systems that they are hacking into, much the same as the hacker from Stoll’s The Cuckoo’s Egg. This is no different than breaking into these organizations’ physical buildings in search of classified information, which is not what I want people doing in my home or office. Secret information is usually secret for a reason, and many times that reason is to keep people safe. Even if you disagree with a war, leaking secret military information could be the equivalent to personally killing soldiers who were relying on that information to not reach enemy hands. While different groups have different reasons for invading others private digital information, none of these reasons make it ethical.

Internet All Around

The Internet is actively being spread all over the world. Google and Facebook among other companies have joined an organization with the sole purpose of making it more affordable to underdeveloped countries. I believe that with the Internet continuing to spread, access to it has become a human right, not just a privilege. While not every country grants its citizens completely free speech, this is one important right that the internet facilitates, most often through social media. One ideal that America was founded on was the duty of the citizens of a country to take action if something with their government is not acceptable. The use of the Internet has already proven in the Middle East that groups of people can unite through shared ideas and take decisive action as a group. While these more basic rights are facilitated through the Internet, these will not be the only benefits when underdeveloped countries gain access. Increased potential for education and commerce, and the facilitation of these basic human rights will be the start of a new way of life for much of the world.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/07/google-facebook-affordable-internet-access-developing-world/?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000589 

Ethical Ancestry

Ancestry.com is arguably the best online family history database, and the best always comes with a price. I believe this price is higher than it needs to be and that Ancestry.com is taking advantage of its customers. In a market where many other services are completely free such as FamilySearch you would think similar services wouldn't be able to charge much, but somehow this is not the case. Using Ancestry.com costs hundreds of dollars per year for full access. I believe the main reason for this high price comes from the nature of family history research itself. When performing this kind of research, it is quite common to reach a point where it seems like there is no more information to be found. When people reach this brick wall, they are willing to pay more to get unstuck than they would be otherwise. Ancestry.com takes advantage of this brick wall and the fact that their customers don't have to pay anything for similar services to charge a higher price than necessary. 

The Hills Are Alive...

Music technology has always presented a choice—quality versus convenience.  For example, you can either have a high quality sound system with your favorite music on vinyl or thousands of songs on an iPod with ear buds. I believe this choice will slowly disappear as technology continues to advance. Memory is progressively becoming cheaper and smaller and music could utilize more of this available space for higher quality files.  With Google Fiber spreading its infrastructure and other companies trying to keep up, Internet speeds keep increasing. Not only does this allow faster downloads for higher quality music files, but it also opens doors for higher quality music streaming. Technology keeps moving forward, and music hardware will not be left behind. Portable speakers and headphones will only get better; there isn't much room to keep getting smaller. As music technology improves, the choice between quality and convenience vanishes, leaving the combination of both as the only viable choice for music.  

The Password Problem

Many people struggle when it comes to using strong and varying passwords for different technologies and services. Passwords which are easy to remember generally aren't very strong, and remembering many unique passwords is just not practical. Strong passwords are becoming increasingly important as people use web services to manage their businesses, finances, and personal lives. In response to this password problem, Apple’s new iPhone has a fingerprint recognition sensor that someone has claimed to have already hacked. Why was Apple so confident in this technology? Most forms of biometric identity verification can easily be fooled. I believe biometric verification could work if it were more complex. For example, if there was a combination of 3D face recognition and a DNA test, then the identifying data would be so complex it would take a lot of time and effort to hack. Another proposed solution to the password problem is a USB stick being developed by Google. This solution has its own set of problems, foremost that people lose small objects just as easily as they forget passwords. However, I think something that can generate strong passwords for multiple services is the right direction and it wouldn't have to be as complex as biometric verification. 

What is the place for technology in church meetings? Tablets and smartphones are increasingly replacing paper resources such as lesson manuals and the scriptures, but many people don’t limit themselves to these kinds of activities. While playing angry birds on a muted tablet or smartphone is an improvement over a loud ringtone in sacrament meeting, it can still be a distraction. In spite of this potential distraction, the church seems to be supporting this transition by providing wireless internet in meetinghouses. The idea of surfing the web at church would have made a younger version of me laugh, but before long the idea of not having this technology will seem just as preposterous. However, I think the advantages of this transition will only be worth it to the degree that people use it in ways that are appropriate for a worship centered setting.