Ethical Direction

Recently in class we discussed the "Us vs Them" mentality when it comes to spies and digital hacking.  For years now the American government has been advising people not to buy routers that come from China, claiming that there were surveillance back doors built into them and that they weren't safe.  America has been very vocal with their denunciation of China's digital spying.  Fast forward to a few months ago when it was revealed that the NSA was regularly intercepting shipments of American-made routers to open the packages and install their own back doors before sending them to other countries.  This brings up the ethical dilemma that, if it's not okay for others to be doing it, why can we denounce them while doing the exact same thing?  When this question was asked to our guest speaker, his response was "America has done more than any other Country for the benefit of the world, so we're justified in protecting that" which equates to "We're the best so we get to do whatever we want".  This attitude leads to a view of the world being "America is all that matters and anyone that matters should be American" rather than finding peace and a way that everybody can belong and coexist.  As a Canadian here as a foreign student, hearing America's complete hypocrisy on this topic being justified by "We're America the great, so we can do whatever we want" is frankly appalling.

Net Neutrality

http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2015/02/26/fcc-ruling-on-net-neutrality-will-have-major-implications-for-the-internet-space/

This article details the recent decision of the FCC to support net neutrality and eliminate the ability of internet service providers to create fast and slow lanes for various internet services.  Though the ruling is a win for anybody using the internet, the public reaction has been disturbing.  A game developer I follow on twitter said something along the lines of "There are two people in the Net Neutrality debate, those who are for it and those who haven't done the research to know better".  The comments to any news post is full of doomsayers claiming how Obama is evil and is trying to ruin the internet.  If they did their research they'd see the current decision is what's been practiced for years, and only recently was it determined that companies could use fast lanes (the thing this decision turns down).  The people who knew enough about the situation decided to do something about it, and sent in petitions to get this changed back.  The people who are too lazy to research did nothing, and then act outraged at a decision they don't understand.

IP

IP in Computer Science has always been a sore spot for me.  I've been doing entrepreneurial software development for a few years, and have received different counsel all across the board as to what my approach to it should be.  I've taken the stance that software patents are often unnecessary and actually hinder creativity (where as the point of patents is to foster creativity by forcing people to come up with new ideas).  Nothing we make in software development we make solely on our own.  Every bit of software is built on something someone else has written, all the way down to the original computer punch cards.  The only reason we're able to make cool things is thanks to those who made cool things before us.  I feel like we should keep our accomplishments as open as possible, and much of the licensing used in Open Source Software resembles this fact, in getting people to acknowledge that they're working together, and to agree to do it more.

Threats

http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/27/7923521/anita-sarkeesian-shares-the-graphic-violent-threats-that-fill-her

I've been following the GamerGate scandal for a while now, and feel like this article sums up one wing of many issues faced by Women in the gaming industry.  The article explains how Anita, a feminists who focuses on sexism in games suffers from harassment due to anonymity online.  I feel that the anonymity that platforms like twitter provide causes issues where people can perform acts that under other circumstances are illegal.  On top of this, current law enforcement isn't yet equipped to handle this new form of harassment.  This permits people to behave in unethical ways, all while claiming to wave the banner of ethics.

Ethics Foundations

One interesting aspect I learned about during this weeks classes pertains to the ethical collapse of "Younguns and Bigger Than Life CEO's".  I'm currently in the situation where I've been offered a job at a company doing something in software development I don't really want to do, but I'd be getting paid much higher than usual to do it.  I've mentioned to them I'd rather work on a project I'm actually excited about, and their response was to kindly try and get me to stay, while raising the salary in my offer.  I'd never really thought of this as unethical, but after the lessons this past week I'm seeing how it could be considered just that.

I find it interesting that these metrics of ethical collapse can also be seen in our government in the way we treat whistle-blowers.  They're overcoming their fear and silence in order to inform the people of ethical collapse, and then that collapse is further strengthened by our reaction and pushing more fear and silence.

I think at times we need to be careful about how we perceive ethics.  Currently in the games industry there's a group of people fighting for 'ethics in games journalism'.  The truth is they're using this as a mask to attack minority game developers (mostly women) with harassment and death threats.  They managed to get a lot of good people on their bandwagon at the start by pointing out (what have now proven to be false) conspiracy theories about a web of game journalists that promote their friends games above all others.

I think as Mormon's we have to be careful about our decrying of ethics.  We often find ourselves thinking we're the only people who understand morality to the 100% perfection.  Just because we have the gospel that teaches us how to live in our personal lives, doesn't mean the gospel is the perfect ethical meter.

I think situational ethics is not something you can 100% plan for.  There's no way you can be Batman and think of a plan for every contingency.  I think your plans to remain ethical should focus more on "This is how we want to act in all situations" rather than a rule book for every situation.

I think in the professional scene where dealing with those of all religions, we need to avoid falling back on "Whatever God says is what is the right thing to do".  I don't think that fosters a conducive environment to work with other people.