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Social Issue and Professional Practice Activity

The document discusses five scenarios related to social issues and professional practice in computing. Scenario 1 is about copying software. Scenario 2 is about a company mining customer data. Scenario 3 is about freedom of expression on social media. Scenario 4 is about the responsibility of ensuring diversity in software development teams. Scenario 5 is about integrating large government databases.

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113 views

Social Issue and Professional Practice Activity

The document discusses five scenarios related to social issues and professional practice in computing. Scenario 1 is about copying software. Scenario 2 is about a company mining customer data. Scenario 3 is about freedom of expression on social media. Scenario 4 is about the responsibility of ensuring diversity in software development teams. Scenario 5 is about integrating large government databases.

Uploaded by

danayzabel02
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Social Issue and Professional Practice

Name: John Gerson L. Baclao Date: 1/13/2024


Course & Year: 3rd Year BSIT

Scenario 1: Should I copy software?


Rajesh invests small amounts on the stock market. Last year he bought and
successfully employed a software package to help him with his investments. Recently,
he met Fundiswa who was also interested in using the software. Fundiswa borrowed
the package, copied it and then returned it. Both vaguely knew that the software was
proprietary but did not read up the details. Did Rajesh and Fundiswa do anything
wrong, if so what? More generally, try to answer the following related questions:
• Should the software package have been lent?
• When is it justifiable to break the law? Bad law, inappropriate law or if the law is easy
to break?

Scenario 2: Should a company mine data?

Consider the case where Tisetso sells hardware and software to over 100 000
customers per year. She has 10 years of experience. As part of the billing process she
keeps information on customers. She buys and uses a data mining tool to derive useful
information about her client’s information such as postal codes, credit card numbers, ID
numbers, etc. Most of this information identifies groups and not individuals. She can
then use the information to market her wares more efficiently. Is this ethical since
customers did not give her the information for this purpose?
• Should the customer be notified?
• Is there a need for establishment of a policy? If so, what should this policy looks like?
• Professional responsibility (professional Ethics): Do professionals have a responsibility
to ensure computing serves humanity well?
Scenario 3: Freedom of Expression

A student, Gert, posts sex fantasies on a blog (alike blogger.com), called Ling’s Journey.
The stories are fictional, but Gert named the main character, Ling, after a real student.
In the story, he described the rape, torture and murder of Ling. He is also member of a
social media newsgroup (alike Facebook), discussing sex acts. An alumnus saw this and
reported it to the University as well as to the social media companies. Gert was then
arrested and held in custody and the social media companies suspended his account.
He was charged with transmitting communication of threat to injure another person,
and violating community policies of the respective social media platforms. The charges
were eventually dropped and his accounts reinstated. Did Gert really do anything
wrong?

• Should self-censorship be enforced. Who decides what is acceptable?


• Is the social media software company responsible for the content on their site?
• Should this data—the blog posts and the social media newsgroup chats—be kept
online accessible indefinitely?
• Is there a need for a public policy on freedom of expression on social media, as
compared to, say, printed hardcopy books and magazines?

Scenario 4: Professional Responsibility


Khadeejah works for a software development company that develops computer games
for children aged 8-14. The latest game that Khadeejah worked on, uses inferential
reasoning on social roles and allows players to choose different characters, primarily a
macho man or a sexy woman. The game is used mainly by boys. Recently, Khadeejah
attended a conference on gender and marginalised groups, where she described the
above. The conference delegates discussed the issue of lower participation of women in
computing and how to make the industry more attractive to women. At the conference,
she also learned that recent research has shown that more diverse teams produce
better results, mainly because assumptions are not taken for granted anymore and
more ideas are brought to the table.
Back at work, Khadeejah realised that her production team is mostly male.
• Should she refuse to work on this team? Should she ask for the team to be reviewed?
• Do you think that the game will sell as well if a different message was given?
• What is Khadeejah’s responsibility, if any, in the team and regarding the games’
topics?
• Should the message in games be taken into account?
• Should software development teams be diverse? It justifiable to refuse to work in a
team that is not diverse?
• Is diversity, or a lack thereof, a responsibility of the profession?

Scenario 5: Large Legacy Databases


Another area that we should be considering is the use of computers in social context.
This includes the use of a large database by a governmental agency such as home
affairs (to keep records of individual’s birth, death, address etc), police or the judiciary
(for criminal records, fine etc). These agencies have always kept records in paper form
long before computers came alongNow these records are being digitised, which also
gives the opportunity to link the databases. For instance, to link the Home Affairs
database recording foreign nationals to the Primary Education department database, so
that illegal immigrants of school-going age can be identified. Now a learner of illegal
immigrant parents is detected upon trying to enrol at her local primary school, because
of the integration of those databases.
• Should we prohibit integration of those two databases to ensure that children will go
to school without fear of deportation?
• What is the implication of keeping large databases by government agencies, ethical or
otherwise?
• Does introduction of these database affect free speech? If so how?
• Consider the rights of the individual. Should they be given rights of access to their
own data or the ability to change incorrect data? Also consider the impact of incorrect
data even if they are changed but not propagated in a timely fashion

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