Ethical - Legal - Cultural Flashcards
Ethical
Discussing what is morally right and morally wrong.
Legal
Discussing what is right and wrong in the eyes of the law
Cultural
Discussing how ethic groups, counties, religions affect and are affected by technology
Environmental
Discussing how technology impacts the environment and how environmental issues affect technological progress.
Privacy
Discussing how technology affects the privacy of our data and of our identity.
Stakeholder
A stakeholder is a person or group who is affected by an issue.
or example, when discussing issues relating to illegally downloading music, there will be several stakeholders involved.
The Individual (downloading the music): they will breaking the law and you could argue that they are being unethical.
The Music Company: they will lose out on revenue
The Government: they will be expected to prevent the ability to download illegally but this will be difficult if the site is hosted outside their authority.
Technology and the Environment - Negatives
Obviously electrical technology requires electricity.
This is fine as long as the methods of electricity production are not harmful but unfortunately most electricity is created from the burning of fossil fuels.
Furthermore, the manufacture of components produces waste products which can adversely affect the environment.
Technology develops rapidly which means that after a few years, devices become obsolete and are taken to landfill, further causes environmental harm.
This is especially true with mobile devices which contain batteries full of harmful chemicals.
Technology and the Environment Positives
Due to ethical and legal expectations, there have been a number of changes which have led to the development of greener technologies which are more efficient and therefore require less electricity.
Social expectations and legislation have led to progress in how waste is dealt with – recycling is now the norm, for example.
Erosion of Privacy
In today’s society, humans are using social media and are forced to provide personal information to government systems, doctors, the police etc.
This is often for good reasons, for example, if you went to the doctors, you would expect them to know your medical history.
However, when you put all these systems together, a fairly complete picture about each individual can be formed.
Digital Divide
There are parts of the UK with super fast broadband and other parts which still have slow or no broadband at all.
This causes issues. Nowadays, productivity is linked with communication speed – you can get more work done and thus attain greater profits with faster broadband speeds.
If half the country is with slower broadband, this can cause unfair advantages to certain organisations over others.
Social Media
On a positive note, people are much more connected these days and as a result are able to share information and ideas with ease.
Social media has also led to some negative issues such as trolling, cyber bullying and other forms of online abuse.
Health Issues
With a greater dependency on computers, people are spending far more time at a computer, which, as a result, means that in their daily lives they are spending less time being active.
This has led to a rise in the number of people being obese, which in turn greatly increases the number and severity of health problems for those individuals. This also adds pressure on the NHS.
Another health issues from repeated use of a computer is back ache and repetitive strain injury (RSI).
Also, addiction can result from over use of computers, for example online betting and gaming. Addiction can also adversely affect lives in a number of ways.
Changing our Cultures
Some real positives have come from this. The fact that we are forever filming has led to the capture of criminals, who had been unwittingly filmed ‘in the act‘ and the filming of major incidents, which we have been able to analyse and learn from.
Blogging has led to a greater understanding of people’s differences and the sharing of information and ideas.
On a more negative side, constant film as led to the erosion of people’s privacy and to nasty crazes such as happy slapping.
5 Computer Laws
Data Protection Act (1998)
Computer Misuse Act (1990)
Copyright, Design and Patents Act (1988)
Creative Commons Licencing
Freedom of Information Act (2000)
Data Protection Act (1998)
Data must be used in a fair way
Data must only be used for the role it is intended for
Data must be relevant – cannot gather more than you need
Data must be up-to-date
Data must not be kept for longer than it is needed for
The person whom the data is about must able to access the data if they wish
Data must be kept safely and secure
Data must not be transferred without protection (i.e. encryption)
