Group items tagged

The Government censorship has expanded outside of China.

This news item meets the requirements for ITGS because it includes all strands of the ITGS Triangle: Social/Ethical Issues, Application to Specific Scenarios and IT Systems. The Social and Ethical issue includes security, the digital divided and equality of access and surveillance.The government has decided to block certain videos from youtube, or articles from other websites regarding the negativity of the country. In other words, citizens and residents of that country won't be allowed to access "negative news" about the country they're currently living in. The digital divide and equality of access is relevant in this case because many other countries can see what different countries have blocked, meaning that for example, a person living in Germany that was not allowed to access information over "neo-Nazi content" may find information that was banned in Thailand about "the Thai king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, with feet near his head." Surveillance also is considered a social impact because the government is monitoring the actions of others, in terms of what they're posting online. The application to specific scenarios would be politics and government since the government is controlling the use of information through censorship. In all, the article explains what the government has controlled over the internet in company with Google, which includes Blogger, YouTube, AdWords, Google Maps and others. But the fact that the government is isolating the amount of information does not suffice the statement that people have the right to have their internet freedom.

This is really interesting! I didn't know about this digital censorship around the world. I knew about how most information is censored in different places in the world, but not in regards to places such as Germany. There are various methods of censorship and more ways than one of being able to get past them; one example is the use of proxies. Again this strikes me as something absurd. I have never heard of digital censorship in a country such as Germany, where there are so many sources for access to data. Why the government would ban such information I still cannot fathom, but the impacts that this arouses are serious, especially in regards to surveillance and the digital divide and equality of access. But ultimately, this was a very captivating post.

Chinese people wait in line for each of the new Apple iPhone releases, buy them at premium price of $600, and send it back to where it was made to get it unlocked.

Chinese people wait in line for each of the new Apple iPhone releases, buy them at premium price of $600, and send it back to where it was made to get it unlocked.

This article meets the requirements for an IT article because, to begin with, it discusses one of the main IT systems, the cellphone (a sophisticated phone such as the iPhone however). It is reliable because it comes from a new source such as the New York Times, which has a reputation of giving reliable information to its readers. The time that the article was written is as recent as can be (less than 24 hour news, meaning that it involves one of the main issues and impacts that affect society on a greater scale today). There are stakeholders involved - the people responsible for the social/ethical issue(s), the people being affected by it, and the people becoming involved as a result of the impacts of these issues. Therefore it can be stated that this article meets all the requirements for ITGS. The social and ethical issues that result from this IT situation are significant to what it led to. One of the main issues that revolves around this issue is the digital divide and equality of access. Once the iPhone is "unlocked", the user has access to many digital streams of data; data in which regular iPhone users do not have access too, or they are unable to stream it. Integrity is also one of the main social and ethical issues; the IT device in question (an Apple iPhone) was "tampered with" and has therefore lost most of its value as well as its originality. People and machines, although it is a social and ethical issue that affects almost all IT systems, it can also be said that it is relevant to this situation as well. The people who are unlocking the iPhone are on this "digital treadmill" in which their life revolves around the database and access to digital information. Information that is so immense and updated so quickly that it can be overwhelming sometimes, yet provide the user with an extensive amount of knowledge, which is often put into good use. The specific scenario that this IT system and its impacts are based upon is politics and government. The act

The Haredi community limits their access and use of the phone and internet to protect themselves. However, this causes a separation between those who have different views on what extent the limitation should be put up to.

This is a very interesting article, I am still shock how religion still influences some people today. It is even more shocking because in the article that I picked, the situation was exactly opposite. People and governments were demanding equality of access. I am shocked at this people are voluntarily limiting themselves from the rest of the world. I wonder in this ever evolving digital age will these traditions last for much longer?

This article exemplifies the impact that technological integration has had on the preservation of traditional customs and morality from the Jewish perspective. Interestingly technology in this case also defines a person for the strength of his or her religious commitment, for example: if one does not have a "kosher phone", then he is not to be admitted into Jewish society because he is ultimately characterized as being immodest and immoral. Restraining one's self from the magnetism of the internet and the dangers it also possesses is illustrated once one takes certain measures to signify the act of taking a stand to secure the sacredness of religion and customs. But once I began thinking about this concept, I started to change my mind gradually. I believe that yes, technology is a potential threat to one's "beliefs", but it only becomes a problem once the user allows such practices to get out of hand. We come back to the same idea: technology has become a label, something that defines us superficially in the minds of others. Just because one may not have a kosher phone, does not have to mean that that person is sending inappropriate texts to another cell phone user. Our bond of trust and reliability upon others is destroyed once we enter the position of forming inconclusive judgements based on the type of technology used and the limitations it draws.

The IT system is the behavior-based software that uses artificial intelligence. the stakeholders are the bank implementing this software and the customers of the bank. The area of impact is business and employment, specifically banking. The issue with the use of this system is reliability. If this software is not reliable, then the customers at the bank are less protected from fraud. Also an issue that arises from the use of this system is security. The use of this system is to protect against fraud. However, if the computer becomes insecure, fraud would not be detected. 

This is a really interesting case. Although it's not robots that one can see that are being used, banks are using artificial intelligence to help them recognize patterns and catch fraudulent people. Small banks are the real stakeholders in this case, and they want to protect their customers and their finances. The automation of the fraud-catching has given the banks more time and makes it easier to handle all the paperwork necessary for a case.

Excellent selection of case studies in all areas of impact

The Open Medical Record System (OpenMRS) is providing countries, such as South Africa, with an online patient medical record system.

This article is about the need for OpenMRS in developing countries such as South Africa. This is necessary because it will help improve how people are treated. By knowing about someone's medical history, it can help decrease the spread of diseases such as HIV and Aids.

The issue is that there is a lack of open medical record systems in developing countries. Because of this diseases are being spread when they can easily be prevented. The thing that people were doing that gave rise to this issue is that in some countries, diseases were being spread at a faster rate then in others because of lack of background medical information. the impact that this has on people is that people in developing countries are spreading diseases at a faster rate. So diseases such as HIV and Aids are spreading in developing countries such as South Africa because of lack of medical background. The stakeholders are patients. The IT system is open medical record system. The area of impact is health. The social and ethical issue is equality of access. By having a medical record of everyone, people will be able to be treated equally because the doctor's will have their whole medical history.

This relates to ITGS because the stakeholder her is a 17-year female who goes to high school in California and does her homework. However, when it comes to doing homework she gets distracted really quick and forgets. When she comes back she feels like she has so much homework until she finally she goes in to a room where she is isolated without technology which helps her complete concentrate and finish her tasks for school. This shows that home leisure comes in affect where technology at home which in this case is a computer and a phone directly links it to social networking and communication. If she was without a phone and a computer I am pretty sure it would less harder for her to get distracted. Sometimes using a computer will help complete the task faster this then will give her more time with her social life. What I am trying to say is that technology has its advantages and disadvantages.

People's face book accounts are being hacked by others alarming all the users about their security.

I agree with you on the issue of security and problems with hackers in this day and age. However, there is something that you may not have thought about. What happens when people create fake Facebook accounts in the name of other people? They have the power to not only use someone else's identity, and enter their friends group, but also create much damage for the person. It is harder to hack a person's account than to just create an account with anyone's desired name. It's a scary thing to know that there many be another Carmen in the world, that looks exactly like you, even taking up your likes/dislikes, and doing everything as if they were you, when it is clearly not. That is an entirely new issue of privacy, and authenticity. An email, user ID, and picture of you is all they need. Anything is possible, whether it's hacking, people not hiring or accepting you into their college because of your Facebook, or having someone take your identity. The internet isn't so safe anymore now is it?

This is really Carmen's bookmark. I inadvertently took control of it. Sorry, but I was trying to see if I could cache. It worked, but I ended up owning it. Ooops!

Discussion about the agreement to integrate the new process of product tracking in company supply chains (RFID technology), continues to widely expand and challenge the business mentality as it has become reinforced by major companies such as Wal Mart and the Defense Department. A dispute transpired between two alliance companies, Symbol (a leader in bar code systems) and Intermec, as both were unable to consider possessing concurrence upon licensing proposals for RFID technology usefulness. Initially, Intermec Technologies, accused Symbol of infringement transgressions in regards to six Intermec patents that were being sold by Symbol; such products included the utilization of RFID technology, an investment that was supported upon by both business partnerships. Such accusations had been followed after Symbol had also charged Intermec for infringing patents including Wi-Fi technology. The issue of integrity as well as reliability resurfaces in this particular case, directly conveying the disadvantages of business collaboration, that must embed mutuality in justly managing shared information, equality of confidentiality and a clear understanding about each businesses' ideas and plans for profit purposes. It is significant to have fluidity in exchanging perspectives, in order to establish a solid foundation of trust that stands as a promise to future investments and processes.

providing computers throughout the world to make a positive impact in education, health, and science

Links to short pieces about how donations of ICT makes positive impacts

I chose this article because I found that it especially related to the field that we are currently studying in. It is that of ITGS, Information Technology. IT jobs are more and more frequently being offshored to nations like India. There is an obvious issue relating to Business and Employment, or in this case, a rising unemployment. The main stakeholders are the IT workers, who, with the hopes of entering a strong workforce, are having their jobs offshored by multinational companies like IBM and HP (these companies are also primary stakeholders). The primary social and ethical issue involved is that of equality of access. This is due to the fact that access is becoming more widespread - access to technology, computers, databases, servers - all throughout the world. There is no longer "the need to be local", as the article states. People's jobs can be moved to a cheaper place, where it won't be so expensive for the company to keep its workers. Offshoring is not only creating higher levels of unemployment, but helps worsen the U.S. economy while it strengthens foreign economies.

How to put a picture on a cake.

For Sam Z's portfolio research

For Sam Z's portfolio research

The stakeholders in this article are lawyers, clients, the software developers, and law firms. The social and ethical issue is people and machines, more specifically, the fact that software is replacing the work of "armies of expensive lawyers." The area of impact is business and employment. The issue here is that law firms are now starting to use this new software in order to replace spending a lot of money of many lawyers to get the same job done. Law firms are able to save their money by investing in this software instead of multiple lawyers. They are also able to save time because the software is able to go through information faster than humans are able to. Clients are also able to save their money because they are paying law firms less to get the same job done. This is a chain reaction. The software developers are also able to make more money now that this is becoming more popular because they are able to continue building on and improving the software they have now and then selling it later on. The issue is that lawyers are being replaced by this new software. A job that used to take 500 lawyers, could now take 1 lawyer, along with this new software. This is an important issue to pay attention to because eventually it might lead to unemployment, even though there are no signs of it now.

This was a pretty interesting article and I actually enjoyed reading it. You seem to have hit all the points and from the article what really stood out to me was when Bill Herr said,"People get bored, people get headaches. Computers don't." This is basically the issue that we are faced with when losing jobs. For those jobs that are repetitive is is more efficent and time saving to have a robot rather than a person doing the job. You hit this point by saying, "A job that used to take 500 lawyers, could now take 1 lawyer, along with this new software." Though I wonder if this is completely a bad thing. You say it is and important issue because it can lead to unemployment, but isn't it also the case that new jobs would arise? Would those jobs be able replace or be more than what was lost?

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This article discusses advances in artificial intelligence which have allowed for legal documents to be read and processed by computers, rather than teams of lawyers. The major stakeholders in this scenario are the lawyer, who'se jobs are being taken by computer e-discovery software,such as Blackstone Discovery, due to the effiiency offered by computers as well as the fact that the services are much cheaper. The obvious concern in this situation is if computers are taking the jobs of actual people. Many argue that this is not the case, since jobs are always available. However, higher paying and more demanding jobs seem to be decreasing due to artificial intelligence. This puts an obvious restriction on people. It seems as though as time progresses, these jobs will start decreasing more and more on the job market.

The IT system in this case is the remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) created by the oilfield engineering company Oceaneering. These robots monitored the leak deep down in the Transocean Deepwater Horizon, where humans could not reach to check out the oil spill. The major stakeholders are BP (the company responsible for the oil spill), experts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who control and protect the environment in the Gulf of Mexico, Oceaneering, which created the ROVs, and the people living in the coast who were impacted by the massive oil spill in the gulf. The area of impact is that of science and the environment. The area of science applies to the robotics and artificial intelligence aspect, and the environment side deals with the environmental concern. The social and ethical issue is that of people and machines, and policies and standards. Experts in the field of environment must issue and enforce the policies that they stipulate, so as to protect the environment.

This article starts out with a scenario about a professional online poker player figuring out that he was actually playing against a bot, which is designed to beat its opponents against all odds. There area of impact of this article can be arts entertatinment and leisure because the players do play for money and compete with one another online. This is from the point of view from the players however it can be also seen as business and employment because bots are being sold on line to do this specific task and to win earnings for whoever has paid for them. The Social and ethical issues here can be Security when looking at it from the point of view of the poker site owner, they are supposed to try and root out any bots to make online playing fair for everyone else. People and Machines can also be applied here because the bots are taking something that is meant for recreation by humans and extending their faculties but to the extent of not playing by the rules and playing an unfair game with some one else. The stakeholders of this issue are the online poker players, the people who own the poker playing website and the people who sell and use the poker bots. The IT system referred to in the article are the bots.

I found this article really interesting because I had not thought about it at all. This is an important case to pay attention to because of the fact that machines are taking over another aspect of the human life. Not only are machines capable of replacing jobs, such as the repetitive ones in factories, but they are also able to take away the fun in gambling. They are also bending the rules and creating an unfair environment for gamblers on the Internet.

This article piqued my interest because it made me think about my own article in a broader way. My article talked about the issue of artificial intelligence talking menial and low skill jobs from people. This article attracted me because it show AI used in another way to make money for people. It takes what is mentioned in my article and extends it to another dimension. People are using these bots to actually make money by competing against human competitors but this is occurring to players unsuspecting players, technically this is using advanced technology to steal.