Computers Social and Moral Imacts

Computers are relatively new within the past 50 years.  They have come a long way.  From being used by the government and big corporations in their early years, to now being used by individuals.  This has resulted in a news outlet shift.  News outlets have not been the same since the internet was introduced to the computer in 1995.  It has enabled people to read and see news in real time.  This factor alone has changed the concept of how we consume information.   For example, lots of social networking companies have created ways for you to consume news information while reading about what your friends or favorite celebrities are doing.  When computers were first introduced to the world no one would have any idea of the global impact they would have.   

The use of computers is constantly increasing in our daily lives.  Some fear that they will slowly replace us.  It has been a societal question since the 40s, when the US War Department tried to assure people that it would “not replace them”.  This was becoming a common worry because machines were beginning to replace people in the factories during this time.  At one point 32,000 people lost their job as a direct effect of the use of machines in factories.  It also allowed for the destruction of the union by deskilling the workers with the use of machines.  This made the workers easily replaceable for anyone on the street.   As a direct result it created the loss of strikes and unionized workers.  The replacement of humans by computers is increasing the public’s interest in them. 

Computers are not only replacing humans in the work place but are also linked to social, technological, and economic developments.  Social media can be considered one of the contributing factors of the public’s growing interest.   Because of social media, people are using the computer to communicate with everyone they know, family, friends, coworkers, etc.  This then raises the question of privacy on computers and the internet.  Do we really want our bosses and coworkers seeing what we did at our family BBQ?  Facebook and other companies give us this false sense of privacy.  We make our settings so we think our page is very appropriate for certain circles of friends and others not as much.  However, one of the things still in question is privacy and property of content on the internet.  Once information leaves your computer is it technically still owned by you?  Or does it now belong to Facebook and they can do as they please with it?  These are things that still need to be ironed out.  It is also the reason for their forever changing Terms of Service on many of these internet sites.

Some people think that computers will bring about a second industrial revolution.  We already see it making radical changes to our work and social patterns.  People are beginning to work from home and communicate more via email.  You no longer need to go to the store; you can order everything in the comfort of your own home.  Government regulations are also changing.  New governing bodies have been developed to take care of all information concerning computers.  The NSA and FISA are the two governing bodies associated with the surveillance of all telecommunications.  They are responsible for copying and analyzing everything that gets passed along on the internet.   As we advance our computational power, it is an increasing risk of destroying the moral values that we hold today.  What if computers were to replace doctors or engineers?  When something goes wrong who are we to blame?  You can’t take a computer to court. Within the upcoming year’s government as well as computer scientists will need to tackle the moral and social problems that come along computers and test their compliance to the code of ethics that they uphold as their values.