Weekly Journal : Essays

There are few things wholly evil or wholly good. Almost everything is an inseparable compound of the two, so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded. — Abraham Lincoln

Submitting Your Work

Push a Markdown formatted plain text file, named week04_ethics.md, to the journals folder of your individual portfolio_NETID repository provided for you in the course's Gitlab group.

Specification

Starting a Big Project

You have likely heard the basic advice for working on big projects: break the work into smaller, more manageable chunks; focus on the next small step that will move you forward; set intermediate deadlines, etc.. However, this can be complicated when you are not sure how to do the project or you are working with other people that have different ideas about chunks or deadlines. Take some time to reflect on how the project started, what you decided to work on initially, how your initial team meetings went, and use that to help yourself imagine a manageable process for getting the project done.

Discuss the following questions to help your thinking:

• What was your initial impression of your team mates?
• How did your first team meeting go from your perspective and what positive or negative events occurred to form your opinion?
• What are ways people can be proactive in a team?
• How can the size and timing of your GIT commits help or hurt your team experience?
• What is the first design challenge you (or your team) chose to work on and why?
• What is the first piece of code you want to work on and why?
• What is the hardest part of this project (or the biggest obstacle) from your perspective (be it technical, design, team related or something else)?
• What would the most successful outcome of this project look like for you?
• What would the worst possible outcome of this project look like for you?

Ethics Essay

Ethical dilemmas are situations in which one must make a moral decision about what to do (e.g., right vs. right/wrong, good vs. good/bad, a moral judgment about a person/event/concept), but the right choice can be unclear or complicated because of the costs involved. Moreover, personal responses to ethical dilemmas may well be internalized (e.g., personal ethics code, moral training at home, religious beliefs, etc.), making it hard to articulate why you believe something is correct or not. Very unlike typical right or wrong problems given by algorithms in your CompSci classes!

However, as technology, computers, algorithms, and software are embedded into more aspects of life, there seem to be more questions than answers. What is your view of ethics in CompSci?

• Provide an example of how computing technology has directly helped you or someone you know. Be as specific as possible.
• Provide an example of how computing technology has directly harmed you or someone you know. Be as specific as possible (it can be the same technology in your previous answer but, presumably, a different scenario).
• Describe an ethical dilemma a programmer might encounter when developing large, complex, software.
• Describe an ethical dilemma a technical company has been in the news for recently. Why do you think they handled well of not?
• Do you think computing technology is generally positive or negative for most people or society as a whole? Why or why not.

After answering the questions above, read this article and respond to it from the perspective of what you can personally do to learn more about ethics in CompSci.