ethical

• Moral, social, ethical and cultural opportunities and risks of digital technology include computers in the workforce, automated decision making, artificial intelligence, environmental effects, censorship and the Internet, monitoring behaviour, analysing personal information, piracy and offensive communications, and layout, colour paradigms and character sets.
• ASCII only uses seven bits and so is unable to represent all of the characters in the Chinese language.
• Unicode is the preferred character set as it is able to represent over a million characters.
• Some character sets are too small to accommodate all of the characters of a language.
• Ethics are concerned with our values as a community and how these will impact different groups of people in society.
• Morals are to do with our personal code of conduct and encompass how we choose to behave, including the decisions we make at the expense of others.
• Computers are becoming an integral part of almost every aspect of our day-to-day lives, it is important that we consider the moral, ethical, environmental, social and cultural implications of these changes.
• Over the past decade, there has been growing speculation about how computers will impact the world economy, in particular our jobs.
• Computers improve efficiency, reducing strain on workers and reducing the need to work in a repetitive and tedious environment.
• Computerisation has hit middle-income manufacturing jobs the hardest, where entire production lines within factories have been replaced by robots.
• As a result of computers generally becoming an essential part of the workplace, employers are now looking for workers who are able to confidently and productively use computers.
• The Internet becoming accessible to almost everyone has resulted in a rise in the services being offered exclusively online, reducing costs of renting out a physical space and cutting labour costs as fewer workers are required to work as front-facing retail staff and bank clerks.
• Demand for delivery drivers to ship parcels and web developers to ensure the website is consistently functioning has grown.
• Artificial intelligence raises questions about accountability, who is responsible when things go wrong and what rights should it have.
• Censorship is the act of suppressing the content that people are able to view, publish and access.
• Many people believe in the idea of a ‘ Free Internet ’, where nothing is filtered at all, in line with the principle of freedom of speech.
• Ankle monitors are another kind of surveillance device used on people under house arrest to track their location.
• Censorship can be used to block out other political opinions and there is much debate about the extent to which government should be able to control what we have access to and decide what is best for the public.
• Tim Berners-Lee created the internet to be a space where people could share and mutually benefit from resources.
• Environmental effects of technological devices can be mitigated by using environmentally-friendly technologies such as smart home systems, which use temperature sensors to determine when heating should be switched on and motion sensors to switch off lights when a room is empty.
• Censorship may be used to block out alternative political beliefs and at this point, it would not be acting to protect the country but rather to push a certain ideology, which some people consider to be unethical and unacceptable.
• In many workplaces, employers monitor productivity by tracking the websites and applications workers are accessing and the time spent on these.
• Environmental effects of technological devices include the effect on the environment due to the production and disposal of these devices.
• Censorship has become necessary for national security purposes and to filter offensive comments and extremist propaganda.
• Personal computers and laptops offer ‘Sleep’ and ‘Stand-by’ features and some newly developed car engines are designed to prevent them from idling so reducing emissions.
• In the UK, ISPs block websites with content associated with terrorism and extremist political beliefs.
• Companies have recently become aware of the value of data, which can reveal key insights about people and their behaviours.
• Censorship can also exist on a smaller level, such as within a school in which pupils may be prevented from accessing material deemed to be unsuitable.
• Surveillance systems and in particular, CCTV cameras are widely used for security purposes and to detect crime, from speeding to violence.
• In English-speaking countries, menus are typically displayed on the left-hand side of the page, while in countries such as Egypt or the UAE, these menus may instead be displayed on the right-hand side of the page as Arabic is read from right to left.
• Piracy is the unauthorised copying of content, such as software or media including music and films, which is a form of theft and is illegal.
• There is concern that insights from personal information could reveal things that act against certain individuals.
• Websites must be laid out in a way that makes it easy for users to navigate between pages.
• The Malicious Communications Act introduced in 1998 makes it a criminal offence to send indecent or offensive messages to anyone online and as such, this sort of behaviour can be traced by law enforcement organisations and result in a criminal record.
• There is pressure on large firms to be more transparent about the data they collect and making it clearer what it will be used for.
• Websites should provide alternative text (alt text) for images and provide a screen magnifier option so people with visual impairments are not disadvantaged.
• Data mining can uncover that a certain individual is at high risk of developing a particular disease, which could lead to insurance companies denying them insurance or charging a higher premium.
• Data mining is the process of analysing large amounts of data to make inferences about people’s behaviour, likes and dislikes.
• Websites must be designed in a way that makes them accessible to people with visual impairments or other disabilities.
• Offensive communication refers to any sort of online harassment, including cyber-bullying or stalking.