Joshua Coon
Christian. Student. Photographer.
2/24/2017 0 Comments Preventing PiracyIn the age of the internet, we have access to an unending abyss of content on the web. In most cases, this unprecedented access is a good thing. We can access information like never before in human history. Alongside the development and growth of the internet, the content that we consume has also transitioned into being mostly digital and intangible. One of the first to make the leap from physical to digital was the music industry. Applications like iTunes were released in the early 2000s and pioneered an entirely new way for content creators to generate revenue. But just as long as there has been things of value, there have been people wanting to steal those valuable things. Services like Napster, a peer to peer audio file sharing website, grew in popularity as users shared and downloaded copyrighted music without paying. Ever since then, there has been a raging battle between the media industry and millions of people trying to skirt the cost of the content. Digital piracy has almost become like breaking the speed limit. The ‘everyone has done it’ mentality has widely become justification. (And just like speeding, you can probably get away with it a couple of times before you’re caught.) Though, it is extremely difficult for media companies actually punish people for stealing their content. Because the means of preventing piracy by way of law is fragmented from nation to nation, big content providers have now begun working alongside companies like Google and Microsoft to curb the problem. Most, if not all of the web browsing that we do starts with a search engine, the copyright media industry has asked Google and Microsoft to decrease the visibility of piracy related links. This simply increases the difficulty of discovering websites that hosts pirated content. While these new tactics may prove to be helpful, will Google and Microsoft’s decision to censor the web set an unhealthy precedent on suppressing the open web? Since search engines are essentially portals to the internet, is it Google and Microsoft’s place to censor information? Although I’m a huge advocate for an open and free web, I would argue that it is permissible (possibly even necessary) for search engines to reduce piracy. Just like search engines report and censor child pornography, search engines should likewise make an effort to prevent illegal downloads and distribution of copyrighted content. As a nation, we have become used to the digital media content that we consume on a daily basis. This opened the door to millions of jobs producing this media. It’s our responsibility, and the responsibility of companies like Google and Microsoft to help protect this industry and their ability to continue creating the content that we so dearly love.
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2/10/2017 0 Comments Distributing News DishonestlyIn today’s world, the average person sources his or her news online. The immediate distribution of information across the web has changed our world drastically. In a matter of seconds and with little effort, we can read, hear, or even see exactly what is going on halfway around the world. The impact of this reality is huge. It has brought more awareness and competency to the masses. It has sprung rallies and riots. It has absolutely changed how our world thinks and operates. One of the most commonly used springs of information around the world is Facebook. Each day 1.23 billion people use Facebook. Yes, BILLION. Each of these people casually scrolling through their ‘news feed’ or awkwardly ‘poking’ their friends (nobody actually does that anymore). No matter how you look at it, Facebook’s scope and influence is incredible. Never before in human history have people been this connected. This unprecedented connectedness is powerful, but also potentially dangerous. Over the years, Facebook has migrated from simply being a social website, to being the world’s largest news aggregator. While this is not inherently a bad thing, the potential for an abuse of Facebook’s dominion is certainly a there. With the United States presidential election season having passed in a widely unexpected outcome and the French presidential election underway, the urgency of accurate and trustworthy news aggregation has never been greater. Recently, Facebook has implemented programs in the U.S. and Germany to curb the spread of fake news. It uses a variety of algorithms and tools to collect and verify the validity of an article. The system compares news articles with a pre-approved list of credible news sources. Although the effects of their efforts have yet to be seen, their ambitious system treds on a fine line. On one hand, the news that is being distributed on Facebook could become a lot more accurate and factual. People could become more informed, without the hazard of misinformation and misreporting. On the other, significant bias could be imposed upon what Facebook’s users interact with and are influenced by. The consequences of exploiting Facebook’s reach would be devastating to any possibilities of a fair and balanced conversation and debate. This danger is real and it could even be happening as you read. In May of last year, Gizmodo published an extensive article on how some of Facebook’s staff members were deliberately manipulating the “trending” news section of Facebook at that time. Former employees reported that their ex-coworkers were intentionally suppressing stories that had anything to do conservative politics. One former Facebook employee said, “depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending…. I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz…. It was absolutely bias. We were doing it subjectively. It just depends on who the curator is and what time of day it is.” Regardless of your political leaning, this should be of concern to you. The world’s largest new aggregator was caught and could still be twisting its influence with political agenda. What if they were doing it against your views? Would you then be concerned?
Facebook is not the only social media company that is faced with this ethical issue. Snapchat, for instance, has the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of generally younger people around the world. With the release of the app’s new “discover section, they now curate and distribute news to millions; much of it certainly with bias. Although neither Facebook nor Snapchat have broken any laws, the ethics of their news aggregating services have been questionable. The need for honesty, transparency, and accountability on this issue is absolute. With unprecedented connectivity in our world, influencers of Facebook and Snapchat’s sort face a considerable dilemma: how might they responsibly and effectively deliver news and information to our ever more so connected world? 2/3/2017 1 Comment Putting People Before PoliticsIn the wake of President Trump’s executive order to temporarily prevent citizens from the countries of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen to cross into the US, many people are speaking out in opposition of these new developments. As of now, most everything that Trump does is deemed ‘controversial.’ Whether this is merited or not, the trivialization of Trump is having a pretty dramatic affect on genuine progress in our country. After Trump signed the executive order restricting immigration from certain countries in the Middle East, members of Trump’s Economic Advisory Council (EAC) came under massive scrutiny from the media and social platforms for associating with the Trump Administration, especially EAC members who are from the tech industry. Just a few days ago, Travis Kalanick, the CEO of the San Francisco-based company, Uber, stepped down from his role in advising the President due to sharp attacks which have caused his company to lose more than 200,000 users. He also received many letters of complaints from employees who were disgruntled by his political involvement. Although not necessarily wrong, the uncanny uproar from Twitter and other social media platforms has caused a great deal of unnecessary and unhelpful damage to these tech leaders and their interests. Rather than promoting progress and supporting someone like Travis Kalanick, who might have had a lasting impact on the future policy decisions of the nation’s Commander-in-chief, many people have opted to stanchly oppose Kalanick’s (and others) efforts to better the nation as a whole. On the contrary, Elon Musk, the notorious CEO of Tesla and Spacex, did not allow for the threat of a loss in revenue or the scrutiny of thousands to deter him from playing a significant role in the current Administration's policy and decision making. Musk said in a recent Twitter post. “In December, I agreed to join the Presidential Advisory Forum to provide feedback on issues that I think are important for the country and the world. In tomorrow’s meeting, I and others will express our objections to the recent executive order on immigration and offer suggestions for changes to the policy. Musk makes it clear that his purpose is to “serve the greater good.” This is a noteworthy goal. On one hand, is it best to serve the greater good? Or on the other, like Kalanick, is it more appropriate to strictly serve those who you oversee? Only time will tell.
Although I do not blame Travis Kalanick for stepping down from the council, I admire Musk’s prerogative to set aside the social and economic pressure, in an attempt to improve the world as a whole, no matter who’s in office. 1/28/2017 1 Comment CODING WITHOUT CONSCIENCE“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” If I may, I’d like to tweak Lewis’ words with a little bit of a 21st century twist: “Coding without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” Lines of code control pretty much everything these days. Every touch on your smartphone, every swipe of your credit card, every time you start your car, every email you send, every web link you’ve clicked, even the blinking cursor on the word processor in which I write this article; everything we do now days can be more or less boiled down to a line of code. To some, this societal dependence on lines of code is of little concern. If it works, it works... Right? I suppose that could be one way of looking at it.
As we build our lives and infrastructure with the devices that we code, maybe it’s time we consider more closely the implications of our blind eye. Bill Sourour, a former programmer for marketing firm in Toronto, Canada was assigned to simply build a seemingly innocent questionnaire for young women to best find the right medication to use. Unfortunately, in his article, “The code I’m still ashamed of,“ he said, “I wish I could tell you that it felt wrong to code something that was basically designed to trick young girls. But the truth is, I didn’t think much of it at the time. I had a job to do, and I did it.” His code directed young women to purchase a particular drug, even though it was against the law for pharmaceutical companies to do so. Later on, he learned that the drug that was being suggested by his questionnaire lead to depression and, in some cases, suicide. Since technology is now so closely woven into all of our lives, the need for ethical precautions in coding is greater than ever. Although this is no small task, it may serve our society well in the long run. An unethical coder can be just as dangerous as an unethical businessman or and unethical politician, if not more. If we licence the engineers that build our buildings and the doctors that care for our health, should we not consider doing the same for the men and women who code our devices? Due to the astronomical number of devices that execute line after line of code written by fallible people, implementing, if you will, a ‘checksum’ of sorts may be an idea to consider. This could mean a law that mandates all coders in industry to complete a credential program or maybe some sort of ‘ethical audit,’ where an organization could inspect closed-source code to ensure its integrity. Additionally, offering an avenue for coders to anonymously report unethical coding would go a long way to prevent things from slipping through the cracks. These are simply crude ideas to consider, but ideas nonetheless. As a modern and considerate society, we should begin to press into the issue of ethics in coding. It’s time for us to take a closer look at how the potential for unethical coding is a greater threat to us than we may think. |
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