Information Technology: Ethical Issues in Computing Report

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In recent years, special attention is given to the social context of ethics rather than to the individual needs of a single user. Critics (Weckert 2007) admit that the task of ethics is to subject to moral scrutiny the norms, practices, institutions, and laws that computer ethics builds on. In the same way, many important issues of computer ethics come under traditional ethical principles, although it should be observed that self-interested computer companies try to divert attention away from ethical questions about their structure, operations, and values by fixing attention on moral questions about the conduct of individual computer users, such as questions about software copying by individuals, about the individual operator or programmer negligence, about unauthorized access by individuals to computer systems, about individual use for pornography or for racism, or about the creation of viruses by individuals.

New technology is bound to have an impact on morality. It requires us to revise accepted practices, to rethink them, give them new articulations and functions, and perhaps in some cases to abolish them altogether.

The main treads in computer ethics are caused by the fact that modern computers are not only complicated and constantly changing, but they are at the same time mysterious. No one—not even the experts, much less the users—completely understand what a particular computer program can and cannot do. At the same time, manuals are a disaster because they set out to tell you everything that the experts think you “need to know” about the particular program, but they never tell you what you really need to know (Weckert, 2007).

And much is governed by trade secrecy. The other trend in computer ethics is closely connected with the relationship of business with the community that has had a long and changing role and involves many areas. It starts out by creating and supplying an employment base within the community where the business resides; from this point, it expands into involvement in the areas of education, the arts, environment, urban development (Shaffer, 2004).

Ethical principles and issues are aimed to protect society and the community from violation of basic human rights and freedoms. An important area under consideration is data collection and social responsibility issues. Many companies violate human rights and privacy laws in order to obtain information about their users and potential customers. Also, abuse of systems comes in many forms. Commonplace abuses rely on normally common motivations (e.g., greed, thrills), and many are only high-tech versions of carjacking and joyriding. Others less common are serious and difficult to anticipate.

The owners of systems can be expected to protect themselves (to an economically optimal level) against commonplace threats, the probability, and patterns of which can be predicted from experience. Less common but serious threats are less liable to be watched for because they arise from motives that surface less often (Shaffer, 2004).

Corruption and disruption, however, best characterize the unexpectedness and malevolence of information warfare: attackers require an external goal and both a concerted strategy and the time to carry it out. Codes of ethics and strict laws are aimed to prevent attacks and introduce social responsibility issues in the computing field. Rights to privacy and the due process usually refer to the invasion of a person’s private life and/or unauthorized release of confidential information about the person.

Job applicants, employees, customers, and many others, in most instances, believe that their political, religious, social, and private life and beliefs should not be exposed or subject to snooping analysis. Some areas people consider as threats to their rights of privacy involve lie detectors, disease, and genetic testing, medical examinations, testing for and control of alcoholism and drug abuse, junk mail and unsolicited telephone calls, the revelation of confidential records, surveillance devices, and computer data banks (Shaffer, 2004).

Competition is said to encourage innovation and the development of new technologies. But in fact, for ordinary users the updates are not always improvements over the old systems; improvements are often only marginal. Newfangled options, which allow you to choose twenty ways to do the same thing, are only Window dressing. The drive for new systems is not really technologically motivated but in the final analysis, it is simply money-driven.

It is not even customer-oriented, because for the average buyer it does not make any difference which operating system he has to use (Mansoor Al-A’ali. 2008). Most of the time the customers do not know what they are buying anyway; in fact, there is often no way of knowing. What is in the package and how it works is kept secret? n fact, computers are often unpredictable. You never know when there will be a crash or even how to fix something when it goes wrong. On the other hand, computer people seem instinctive to deny that anything can go wrong with the technology (Weckert, 2007).

At the beginning of the 21st century, the government, computer industry, and society are going to have to work together more closely in the future if reasonable standards and progress are to be made in this area. If the government continues in the direction in which it has trended over the past 20 years, it will only get more powerful, more oppressive, and more righteous than it already is. There is no argument that there were many social ills that needed to be rectified and still do need to be improved upon. Business certainly has some responsibility to society in helping resolve these problems implies, society also has some responsibilities to the business.

If government and society will work with computer companies and businesses then everyone can fulfill their commitments and obligations (Weckert, 2007) The five responsibilities computer companies and It professionals have to government and society are

  1. setting rules that are clear and consistent;
  2. keeping the rules technically feasible;
  3. making sure the rules are economically feasible;
  4. making the rules proactive not retroactive;
  5. making the rules goal setting, not procedure prescribing (Madison, 2004).

Codes of practice should be an important self-regulatory tool for achieving this goal. The costs of incidents and ongoing problems are becoming increasingly too expensive in terms of negative public and customer perception.

In sum, recent trends in computer ethics suggest that the industry is affected by global business changes and new technological solutions which demand new principles and moral values applied to IT. A code of conduct, business practice, or ethics should be commonly used by a business to define a commitment to lawful and ethical business practice and to guide employees’ inappropriate business behavior.

The focus should be on the activities commonplace to the company, such as marketing and relations with customers and governments, although an important variation, the code of practice, has emerged within IT industries whose operations affect the environment and consumers. A business code should be normally promulgated by a corporation and enforced by it. Sanctions and punishments administered for code infractions should be within the authority of the organization and industry in its capacity as an employer.

Bibliography

Madison, M. J., 2004, A Pattern-Oriented Approach to Fair Use. William and Mary Law Review, 45 (4), 1525.

Mansoor Al-A’ali. 2008, Computer ethics for the computer professional from an Islamic point of view. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society 6 (1),. pp.28 – 45.

Shaffer, D. W. 2004, When Computer-Supported Collaboration Means Computer-Supported Competition: Professional Mediation as a Model for Collaborative Learning. Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 15 (2), 101.

Weckert, J. (Ed.). 2007, Computer Ethics. London: Ashgate.

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