TOPIC 10

TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY

Objectives:

To understand the impact of IT on society.

To understand ethical issues associated with IT and how to handle them.

Readings:

  • Kallman & Grillo (1993) Ethical Decision Making and Information Technology, Chpt 1.
  • Burmeister , O (2000) Applying the ACS code of ethics, Journal of research and Practice in Information Technology 32(2) pp107-120.
  • Beekman, pp19-20 and 203-207, Chpt 11, pp 454-460 (for social and ethical issues)

An Information Society?

Our society is moving from the Industrial Era into the Age of Information.

  • The steam engine enabled the Industrial Revolution
  • The computer, and the convergence of computing and telecommunications technologies, are enabling an information revolution.

IT has had a huge impact on society, the world economy, on business and in the lives of individuals.

It has also raised important issues about life today (see Beekman readings in references for this topic).

IS professionals frequently have to make ethical decisions about these issues (see later in topic).

These issues can be grouped into categories but there are overlaps.

Examples of issues in IT

Dependence on ITC:

  • A saboteur entered telecom tunnels in Sydney on 20th November 1987 and severed 24 cables. Over 35,000 lines went down, affecting computers, ATMs, EFTPOS, telex & fax services. Many businesses were out of action for 48 hours.
  • In 1984 a fire at a Tokyo exchange destroyed 3,000 data communications facilities & 89,000 other telephone links. Total direct and indirect business losses were estimated at 13 billion yen.

Equality of access:

Nelson Mandela opened the Telecom ‘95 World Telecommunications conference with a warning...

“Telecommunications cannot be simply treated as one commercial sector of the economy, to be left to the free market. If more than half the world is denied access to the means of communication, people of the developing countries will not be fully part of the modern world”

He stressed the need to encourage investment in telecommunications infrastructure in developing countries by international companies. To illustrate the scope of the problem, Jacques Santer (President, European Union Commission) added..

“(it is not) acceptable that there are more telephones in Manhattan than in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. Nor that half of humanity has never even made a telephone call”

Technology Push or Demand Pull ?

The way we use computers has influenced the way we do business, run our societies, and fill our leisure hours. Is our society being shaped by technology? Can we influence the way they are used?

One of the basic concerns within social studies of technology is to open up the “black box” approach to technology.

In everyday life many people happily embrace the latest technologies, be they computers, genetic screening, or mobile phones, and rarely consider how they are changing our lives.

We tend to think of the technologies as “out there”, and external to our personal and social lives. Often we see the technology almost as an autonomous force that somehow influences our existence.

There are two schools of thought here...

  • Instrumentalism - computers are purely tools that we use to do tasks. They are neutral, non-threatening, and we control them.
  • Technological determinism - computers are powerful, they influence our lives and threaten our capacity to choose. Optimists see this as a positive force, overcoming human illogicality. Pessimists see technology relentlessly re-shaping society and eroding human dignity.

Both of these views are regarded as over-simplistic by most theorists in the field of social studies of technology. A more contextualist view is usually taken. Rather than seeing the technology as “out there”, it is seen as part of social life, embedded in the social, political, economic and cultural world in which it is used. Technology is studied as part of human social activity, rather than separate from it.

An example of a contextualist approach

An example of this contextualist approach is the effect of computers on employment levels. Predictions as to the future of work have varied - in the forties, computers and automated factories were seen as releasing people from drudgery to a new world of leisure and higher goals.

By the seventies commentators still saw people being released from work - in offices as well as factories - as a result of computerisation. However, the utopian vision of a pleasant leisure filled life did not eventuate. Rather, the released workers were suffering unemployment, not enjoying leisure. What was wrong with the optimistic vision of the forties?

The earlier forecasters had focused on the technology alone, not attempting to place it in a political and social context. Computers did replace human workers doing many tasks, but the social consequences were not those forecast.

An understanding of economic and political forces relating to the redistribution of the economic benefits of automation and computerisation needed to be included in the portrayal of the effect on workers. A leisured utopian result would be unlikely without changes in the economic and social infrastructure.

Thus the social contextual approach does not consider the outcomes of computer technology as the inevitable result of using computers. Rather the social consequences are shaped by how computers are used within a social context.

If we accept this approach, the importance of using computer systems in an ethical way becomes clearer. If we accept the social shaping of technology, the choices we make when using computers become part of that shaping process.

Why is ethical computer use a special challenge?

There is no distinct category of “computer ethics”; rather there are ethical situations where computers are involved. The capabilities of computers allow us to perform unethical actions faster, and perform actions where the scale of processing would be impossible without the computer.

Using computers and networks alters relationships between people. Personal contact is reduced, and the speed of communications often does not allow time to reflect on the possible implications of unethical use.

Information in electronic form is far more “fragile” than when it is on paper. It is easier to change, and vulnerable to unauthorised access. Property rights, plagiarism and privacy are active issues.

Efforts to protect information integrity, availability and confidentiality may conflict with the benefits of information sharing.

Questions

Would you search through the top drawer on someone else's desk?

Would you search through the files on someone's computer?

Would you steal $600.00 from your friend?

Would you take a copy of a software package from his/her computer?

Would you accept a large overpayment in cash by a check-out operator?

Would you accept a large erroneous electronic deposit into your bank account?

  • Would you report a credit card transaction which is not debited against your account?

What is unethical computer use?

Unethical computer use takes many forms. Networked computers are considered less secure because of their external connections to potential “hackers”. However most unethical computer usage is performed by people inside an organisation.

Areas of ethical concern re computer use can be categorised as:

  • Social & economic issues
  • Issues of individual practice
  • Development process issues
  • Issues involving managers & subordinates
  • Processing issues
  • Issues relating to the workplace
  • Issues of data collection, storage, access
  • Internet issues
  • Vendor-client issues
  • Computer crime

Social & economic issues

  • Job displacement - computers do cause job displacement. Some people can be retrained, but there is an ethical issue involved in minimising the hardship for those who ere removed from employment.
  • Computer work is high pressure, always behind schedule and can involve long hours. Family problems & divorce are high in the profession. Is management being fair to computer professionals?
  • Civil rights - Computer access issues. Do we all have equal rights to computer access? Is it fair that different schools may have vastly different computer resources? That some universities have easier & more generous terms of accessing the Internet for students than other universities. What about rural access? Should we all be able to access the Internet equally - via the public library system for example?

Issues of individual practice

Responsible attitude to security eg

  • use passwords
  • change them frequently
  • do not use easy to guess passwords

Protect resources by...

  • backing up files
  • locking removable disks up securely
  • not leaving confidential data unattended on the screen

Development process issues

  • Incomplete or unreliable programs which fail to perform as expected - due to incomplete analysis, poor testing, rushing to meet deadlines......
  • Software piracy - as much as 50% of all PC software may be pirate copies. Is it a reasonable excuse to say the person/firm cannot afford it and will be disadvantaged without it?

Issues involving managers & subordinates

  • a programmer who feels he has been passed over for promotion plants a “bomb” which deletes company data
  • a manager demands a programmer produce an accounting routine that does not conform to generally accepted accounting principles

Processing Issues

  • Reliability - or unreliability. Generally a promised service is not delivered and harm results.
  • Untimely output - who is responsible for a late clearing cheque
  • Unintended data use - data collected for one use should not be used for another purpose without permission eg credit card companies selling customer purchase data. Includes computer matching by government agencies eg matching taxation and social security details

Issues relating to the workplace

  • ergonomics - creating a comfortable, healthy work environment - minimise eyestrain, backache etc
  • monitoring - of employee activity key issue is the employees knowledge and consent

Issues of data collection, storage, and access

A whole host of issues relate to data confidentiality, privacy, accuracy:

  • How much data do you collect? What you need or all you can get?
  • Has the subject given permission for the data to be used?
  • Should you inform a subject of the use to which data is put?
  • How accurate is the data? How accurate need it be?
  • How much effort should be made to correct errors?
  • Who has access?
  • Who knows who has access?
  • Do we monitor illegal access attempts?
  • Who owns the data?

Internet issues

  • does the employer/carrier/access provider/government have the right to monitor the content of e-mail etc. Informed consent is an issue here. Should the rules be the same for e-mail as post office mail?
  • does the employer/carrier/access provider/government have the duty to monitor the content of e-mail etc, to prevent the network being used for terrorism, child pornography, criminal activity etc
  • is personal Internet use in the employers time unethical?
  • is sending unsolicited e-mail unethical?
  • is “spamming” (bombarding with e-mail) unethical ? - in response to unsolicited mail? as a political protest?

Resource exploitation issues

Wasting resources, interrupting services, and taking advantage of vulnerable systems

  • planting viruses and logic bombs
  • hacking
  • using an employers computer for personal gain

Vendor-client issues

  • shipping a new software product on the advertised release date even if it is not fully tested
  • user continually changing the system specification, adding to projected development costs
  • a consultant being paid to develop a product exclusively for one client and subsequently selling it to others
  • vendor guarantees “timely” maintenance. User does not believe it has been “timely’

Computer crime

  • rising
  • victims often unwilling to report it
  • use of imaging & DTP etc to create/copy/alter official documents, photographs.....Recently in Perth two teenagers were accused of creating counterfeit currency on their PC.

Solving Ethical Dilemmas

Ethical issues are often difficult to resolve, and our reaction is often intuitive. Kallman and Grillo recommend the following procedures for dealing with ethical dilemmas (note: the Kallman and Grillo reading does not specifically cover this procedure but provides background for it).

The steps are:

Step 1: Analyze the situation – facts and stakeholders

Step 2: Make a defensible ethical decision

a)Isolate the ethical issues.

b)Examine the legal issues

c)Consult guidelines

d)Discover the applicable ethical principles:

e)Make a defensible choice

Step 3 Describe steps to resolve the situation

Step 4 Prepare policies and strategies to prevent recurrence

Step 1: Analyze the situation

What is the subject of the situation? What is it all about?

a)What are the relevant facts?

b)Who are the stakeholders? Who has an interest in the outcome?

Step 2: Make a defensible ethical decision

a)Isolate the ethical issues.

  • Should someone have done something or not done something?
  • Does it matter that.....(reasons or excuses)

b)Examine the legal issues

Actions can be:

  • Ethical and legal - buying Sybiz to do accounting for clients
  • Ethical but not legal - taking a backup copy of a software package for security purposes, even though the copyright agreement prohibits it.
  • Not ethical but legal - using a pirate version of Sybiz in a country with no copyright laws.
  • Not ethical and not legal - pirating copyright software.

c)Consult guidelines

Formal guidelines - lists of decision criteria eg corporate policies; codes of ethics

Consider these questions:

  • Do corporate policies apply? Is the act consistent with corporate policy?
  • Does the act violate corporate/professional codes of conduct? eg ACS code of Ethics
  • Does the act violate the Golden Rule? (treat others as you would wish to be treated)
  • Does it serve the majority rather than a minority? Generally seek an outcome which satisfies the common good, not the good of an individual, or a small group.
Informal guidelines

Tests for rightness/wrongness:

  • Mother test : Would you tell her?
  • TV test: Would you tell a large audience?
  • Smell test: Do you feel that something is wrong, but can’t quite pin it down?
  • Other person’s shoes test: What if the roles were reversed?
  • Market test: If the act were public knowledge, would it increase or decrease your companies market share?

d)Discover the applicable ethical principles:

  • Explore ways to minimise harm
  • Analyse relevant rights & duties
  • Define professional responsibility
  • Examine the situation in terms of egoism & utilitarianism
  • Apply concepts of consistency and respect

Principle of harm minimisation:

Choose the action that minimises actual & potential harm.

Globally, this is a common standard for deciding right from wrong. It often helps to spot ethical problems as well as analyse them. Often it helps to identify the stakeholders and examine the issue from their perspective. A stakeholder is any individual, group or organisation that will be concerned in the situation. Harm may be physical, psychological, financial, or to reputation.

Principles involving rights and duties:

i) Rights include:

  • The right to know - Do we have a right to access information relating to us on a database? Should we control the use to which it is put?
  • The right to privacy - Do we have a right to control who should access information about us?
  • The right to property - To what extent do we have a right to protect our computer resources from misuse? How do we deal with copyright issues on the Internet? There is no current legislation covering copyright issues of transmission of music or art on the Internet. Does this mean we can ignore the moral obligation to recompense an artist whose work we download?

ii) Duties include....

Personal duties:

To foster trust - this will occur if others have confidence that our work is competent and will not cause harm

Integrity

Truthfulness

Justice - results from fair dealing eg wrong acts are punished, services are paid for

Beneficience & nonmaleficience - helping others, avoiding doing harm

Gratitude and reparation - being thankful for the efforts of others, providing fair recompense for harm

Self Improvement - learning from our mistakes

Professional responsibilities:

Maintain appropriate professional relationships - differ from personal relationships. May be specified in a contract eg employees should perform a full days work

Maintain professional efficacy - We use our skills/knowledge to provide goods/services. We should do this fairly eg not accept a 3 month contract to produce a system if we know it is impossible to do so effectively in that time.

  • Particularly important in computing are...

Maintain confidentiality - protect information from unauthorised access/use. eg should a bank use live data from clients accounts to test a system, if this means many staff will have access to the details of others accounts?

Maintain impartiality - provide services without bias eg a software firm should make new releases available to all clients on the same terms.

Principles involving consequentialism (teleology)

Teleology focuses on the end result of an action. We judge it to be right or wrong on the basis of the outcomes. Two main types are:

i)Egoism

Enlightened self interest. Justifies an act which furthers our own ends. Often used to justify businesses seeking to increase profits. Needs to be guided by other principles, or becomes self-interest. Eg, you decide not to incorporate a pirated piece of code in your own software product because you are afraid of the consequences if you are caught.

ii)Utilitarianism

We consider whether an act will benefit others as well as ourselves. Eg, a company provides high security on its databases to protect its clients information. This increases their costs, but is of benefit to the clients.

Kant’s categorical imperative

i)Principle of consistency

Would it make sense to force everyone to take the action we are considering? If not, do not take that action. Eg, if everyone used pirate software rather than buying it, how would the creators of software survive? They would stop creating software.

ii)Principle of respect

Treat people with dignity. People are not a means to an end. Conducting electronic surveillance without the knowledge of employees might be considered an act of disrespect.

e)Make a defensible choice

Review the conclusions reached in the preceding steps and ask:

  • Does the action serve the public interest? Or at least, not cause unnecessary social harm?
  • Are any basic human rights violated?
  • Are any commonly accepted duties abridged?

Step 3 Describe steps to resolve the situation