Here are some issues that you may have noticed in the news, each of which
involves the intertwining of technology and human values:
Personal privacy when surfing the web
Software quality issues: How good is good enough?
Licensing of software engineers
The digital divide: The haves and havenots of information
U.S. Supreme Court ruling on virtual kiddie porn
U.S. Supreme Court ruling on filters on public library Internet use
U.S. Supreme Court ruling that children have the right to buy violent games
Tracking terrorist and hate group websites
Censoring information on the web about making bombs
Loss of jobs due to technology
Computer algorithms for determining the risks of subprime mortgages
Virtual reality as recreation
Computer simulations in the courtroom Email spam and legislation to stop it
Online education and cheating
Surveillance cameras in public areas
Face recognition to scan for terrorists \(\mathrm{FBl}\) databases of criminals
Websites listing convicted sex offenders' addresses
Stolen credit card numbers posted on the Internet
Sales taxes on Internet sales Computing for the disabled Open source software
versus commercial software
Remixing pictures or videos found on the web to create art
Term papers or problem solutions for sale on the Internet
Internet-based plagiarism detection services States selling information
compiled from drivers' licenses
Database matching to find deadbeat parents
Internet casino gambling
Workplace monitoring using computers Legal rights for robots
Smart bombs and other lethal robots/ drones
Artificial intelligence devices for medical diagnosis
DNA evidence in death penalty cases
The rise and fall of Anonymous, LulzSec, and WikiLeaks
Edward Snowden's leaks of U.S. security documents
Fake news as a political campaign tool
a. Practice creating analogies-Pick three topics from the list shown here, or
make up some topics of your own that involve technology and humans. For each
topic, think of an analogous situation that does not involve computing. For
example, if you picked "online education and cheating," an obvious analogy
would be to consider face-to-face education and cheating. If you picked
"personal privacy when surfing the web," an analogy might be "personal privacy
when renting movies." When you've picked your three topics and your analogy
for each, make a short list of how each analogy is like the topic and how the
analogy is different from the topic.
b. Practice finding stakeholders-Pick your favorite topic from among the three
topics you chose in Exercise 1a. For that topic, make a new list of all the
significant stakeholders in the topic. (Hint: Remember that a stakeholder can
be an individual, a group of individuals, a corporation, perhaps the
environment, or any other entities you think are important in your topic.) For
each stakeholder, list what the stakeholder most values in this situation.
It might help you to frame a specific question or propose a particular action
related to the topic. For example, if your topic is "online education and
cheating," you might propose the action, "online education should be suspended
until online cheating can be better controlled" or "online education should
include automated cheating detection." "This narrowing of the topic sometimes
simplifies the task of imagining what people value with respect to this issue.
c. Practice identifying costs and benefits-For each stakeholder you identified
in Exercise \(1 b\), list the possible costs and benefits in the situation you
chose. In many cases, these are potential costs and benefits, things that
might or might not happen. Sometimes the words vulnerability and opportunity
can be more accurate than cost and benefit because of uncertainties in the
situation.
d. Practice looking for duties and responsibilities-In the previous two parts,
you identified some stakeholders. Let's use the letter \(N\) to stand for the
number of stakeholders you identified. Now, make a two-dimensional table that
has \(N \times N\) cells.
At the top of the table, label each column with one of your stakeholders. At
the left of the table, copy the list of stakeholders, one for each row. If the
stakeholders were \\{Fred, Ethel, Lucy\\}, then the table would look like
this:
$$
\begin{array}{|c|c|c|c|}
\hline & \text { Fred } & \text { Ethel } & \text { Lucy } \\
\hline \text { Fred } & & & \begin{array}{c}
\text { Things } \\
\text { that Fred } \\
\text { owes Lucy }
\end{array} \\
\hline \text { Ethel } & & \begin{array}{c}
\text { Things } \\
\text { that Ethel } \\
\text { owes Ethel }
\end{array} & \\
\hline \text { Lucy } & \begin{array}{c}
\text { Things } \\
\text { that Lucy } \\
\text { owes Fred }
\end{array} & & \\
\hline
\end{array}
$$
Inside each cell, list any duties or responsibilities that the stakeholder on
the left owes the stakeholder above. For example, three of the cells are
marked in the sample table. Don't neglect the cells that describe duties
people have to themselves.
