Chapter: Reason, Relativity, and Responsibility in Computer Ethics

Quote:

Computers are logically malleable. This is the feature that makes computers so revolutionary. They are logically malleable in that they can be manipulated to do any activity that can be characterized in terms of inputs, outputs, and connecting logical operations. Computers can be manipulated syntactically and semantically. Syntactically, a computer’s performance can be changed through alterations in this program. And semantically that states of a computer may represent anything one choose, from the sales of a stock market to the trajectory of a spacecraft. Computers are general purpose machine like no others. That is why they are now found in almost every aspect of our lives and that is why a computer revolution is taking place.

What I expect to learn:

To have an idea what are the responsibilities connected to the growth of computer ethics

Review:

There are different ways of looking at things. For example, I am the user of a website. Of course, how the website works, how it scans through the list of its products and how it calculates my overall checkout cost is not my concern but its effectiveness is that truly counts for me but that do not stop there. The use of online information, as an example, is not just simple copying and pasting information from a website to a word document then to be submitted the day after. There are stated rules or policies, as respect for some, that much be strictly followed. But is it really being abided by people who take the benefits of such feature? I even know people that ALMOST got suspended because they failed to put source in their final research paper. I know that the usual answer of students to such situation is “What? Suspension because there is no source?” okay, that response might seem nonsense to professors but look at the most obvious part of that reaction, that information is available online so why bother source it? Why not just put “I got it online, okay?” and the main reason to that is because it is something that is supposed to be sourced, something that we value where in we need to credit the author, it is something made for us to be accessible so a simple sourcing should not be a big deal.

Remember, there are reasons why we have to comply to policies that are made available for us to read through. It is not really something to just scan through because how in the world will we get the truth in things if we don’t even take time to understand it?

What I learned:

·         Ethics in the global village

·         Logical malleability and informational enrichment

·         The special nature of computer ethics

·         Reasons within relative frameworks

·         Core values

·         Responsibility, resolution, and residue

Integrative Questions:

1.    What does “global village” means?

2.    Why did the author insist that computers are malleable?

3.    Enumerate at least four (4) responsibilities of computers ethics.

4.    What are the core values of computer ethics?

5.    Enumerate the possible policies for a Website.