Industry Issues

Dr Andy Evans

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Computer Ethics

  • Rapidly growing field.
  • Traditional elements:
    • Privacy and data protection
    • Copyright and Piracy
    • Software supplier responsibilities
  • Newer:
    • Big Data use
    • Robotic ethics
    • Control by computers
    • Integrating computers into our worldview
  • A good starting point for the newer stuff is Floridi et al.:

Women in computing

  • In the war, approximately 75&percent; of employees at Bletchley Park were women, and many worked with the computational machines, or were human 'computers'.
  • In the US in 1984, 37.1&percent; computing degrees were to women; by 2010-11 it was 12&percent;.
  • In Britain in 2014 only 13&percent; of computing students were women, and 3&percent; of IT and computing engineers.
  • A case study in the issues around gender and computing includes the fallout from PyCon Santa Clara in 2013 in which a overheard joke resulted in both perpetrator and complainant being fired from their jobs.

Women in computing

Environmental impact

  • Electricity usage (hardware; air conditioning; data transmission).
  • Production of hardware (standard raw materials; rare earth materials; power).
  • Waste disposal.
  • Hard to calculate total resource uses.
  • In general, the larger cloud based companies are trying to move to 100% renewables which also makes total unrenewable energy hard to estimate.
  • Greenpeace place the total energy value between 7 and 12% of total electricity usage.

What can we do as coders?

  • Make efficient software that runs fast.
  • Minimise code size so it runs on smaller computers.
  • Reduce video download where possible.
  • Encourage the use of offline solutions but don't offload on to printing.
  • Train people so they solve problems quicker with less resources.
  • Turn off computers when not used (or put into efficient sleep mode if not).
  • Use cloud suppliers with a renewable energy policy.

Good sources