We can say, that contractions, slang and icons are signals of a new communication style, but I’m absolutely sure, that it’s not the death of appreciation of written language. I don’t think that today’s people would use Shakespeare’s (1597) language:

“Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.”

Today, we use a different language than even 50 years ago. We many times cannot understand  our parents and they cannot understand us.
I don’t think that written language is not appreciated nowadays. Let’ just look at the Internet! Almost all information can be found here written. We can see, that the number of multimedia is growing, but it’s still mostly text based. Information archiving and searching is text based also. Although as  Brad Linder (2008) wrote Google is able to recognise spoken text in selected Youtube videos, I don’t think that this technology will replace text based storage and search in the near future.

My native language is Hungarian. The problems here are basically the same. We do have an Academy which defines the “official” language, although it’s not forced. But there are some people, who think that anybody using a bit different Hungarian than the official version is uneducated and they think it is unacceptable. The situation is more intresting, because we use a growing number of English words. So many people hate it! They ant to defend the language from foreign words. Although it’s more difficult to express many things in plain Hungarian, than with using English words. Many professions, including IT, use it’s specialised words only in English. Although noadays even the operatingg systems are localised, for me it’s very difficult to use them in Hungarian. For example I know, that I can change the settings in Windows in the Control Panel, but in Hungarian it’s called Vezérlőpult. It’s not a problem, when I myself using the Hungarian version, I can recognise everythin. But it’s etremely difficult to give orders on the phone when I’m not in front of the computer and my partner is using Hungarian version of the software.

Reference list:

William Shakespeare (1597) Richard III [Online] Available from: http://shakespeare.mit.edu/richardiii/index.html (Accessed: 07. February 2010)
Brad Linder (2008) Google adds speech recognition to video search [Online] Available from: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/15/google-adds-speech-recognition-to-video-search/ (Accessed:07. February 2010)

We are responsible fo our acts as we are human. Computer professionals’ responsibility is for example to defend the children from the dangers on the internet. But all humans are responsible to defend the children from dangers in the world.  Stefan C. Dombrowski & Karen L. Gischlar (n.d) for example suggest a kind of parent-children “contract” in order to make sure both the parents and the children have the same knowledge about the rules. A good resource of articles is the website of the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. For example the user nbrigham wrote on this website ” Strict copyright laws may protect the interests of companies selling intellectual property products, but these same laws could limit public access to information.” which shows that many times there isn’t just one good and one bad way. In my oppinion IT professionals working for a company has to follow the company’s directions and work for it’s goals, unless the company works illegally or making unethicaly products, for example virus or troyan software. But this also not different for non-it professionals. They should not take part in making of any illegal or unethical product or service.

My oppinion is that responsibility and ethics are not derived from a profession, they are derived from the humanity.

References:

Stefan C. Dombrowski & Karen L. Gischlar (n.d) Keeping Children Safe on the Internet: Guidelines for Parents [Online] Available from: http://www.nasponline.org/publications/cq/cq342internetsafety_ho.aspx (Accessed: 07. February 2010)
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (2008) Intellectual Property [Online] Available from: http://cpsr.org/issues/ip/index.html (Accessed: 07. February 2010)

Reference list:
Charlie White (2006) Samsung Smart Zipel Refrigerator [Online] Available from: http://gizmodo.com/156257/samsung-smart-zipel-refrigerator (Accessed: 15 October 2009)
Glyn Moody (2009) Should Software Developers Be Liable for their Code? [Online] Available from: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/should-software-developers-be-liable-their-code (Accessed: 15. October 2009)
Francez Nissim (1993) Program Verification (International Computer Science Series) Boston: Addison-Wesley.

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When you speak or write, do you own the words that you have created? What about the thoughts that preceded those words?

These questions get to the very heart of referencing and citation requirements in academic work. In the Western academic world, the presumption is that you do, in some sense, own your words and thoughts; at the very least, you have privileges pertaining to them. The main privilege is to be credited, or cited, for your effort and scholarship.

These notions of authorship and ownership, however, are based in cultural expectations. Even in the western world, these expectations have changed over time. Other cultures have historically placed emphasis on communal knowledge and showing respect through imitation (Bowden, 1996).

What is the norm in your culture? Describe any cultural presumptions about knowledge and ownership, both traditionally and in an academic context. How have modern trends such as the globalization and democratization of information affected these presumptions? In your response, also describe a plan for gaining or honing the citation and referencing skills you will need as you participate in this degree program. Be sure to visit the “Harvard Referencing System” link found under Module Information in this online classroom for more information on these requirements.

My answer was:

In my oppinion the answer is not a simple yes or no. Of course, the words themself cannot be owned. They are just tools what everybody use to communicate. Words are just used to form sentences and biger units of text. The first question is that the series of words can be owned or not? I think simply the sentences, the series of words also cannot be owned. Absoluteastronomy.com (http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Infinite_monkey_theorem, n.d)writes about Infinite monkey theorem: “The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare”  Even IETF has an RFC (No. 2795) which is about the infinite monkey theorem. Infinite money theorem is an example for the Borel–Cantelli lemma. It can be easily seen, that the words themselves worth nothing. Any series of words can be produced by a big enough number of random choices.

Then we have a question to answer. What has the value? What do you own if not the words you say or write? Jorge J. E. Gracia wrote according to the same article on Absoluteastronomy.com “An author is defined both as “the person who originates or gives existence to anything” and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. …

 If a monkey is capable of typing Hamlet, despite having no intention of meaning and therefore disqualifying itself as an author, then it appears that texts do not require authors. Possible solutions include saying that whoever finds the text and identifies it as Hamlet is the author; or that Shakespeare is the author, the monkey his agent, and the finder merely a user of the text. These solutions have their own difficulties, in that the text appears to have a meaning separate from the other agents: what if the monkey operates before Shakespeare is born, or if Shakespeare is never born, or if no one ever finds the monkey’s typescript?” He thinks that the key is the intention, the intention of creating the produced output. Not looking into the legal aspects, my oppinion is very close to his opinion. Not the words matter, but the thought behind them. The unique property of the man, the ability to create new things.

Maybe it’s the most intresting thing in the mankind’s future? Will we create machines with the ability to create original things? Yes or no, I cannot know, yet. But one thing is sure. If we will, that rises a question even more difficult to answer: do you own the words your robot – or intelligent software – produced?

Reference list:

Absoluteastronomy.com (n.d) Infinite monkey theorem [Online]. Available from: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Infinite_monkey_theorem (Accessed: 04. October 2009.)

S. Christey (2000) The Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite (IMPS) [Online] Available from: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2795.txt (Accessed: 04. October 2009.)

The chosen issue was: “Is it ethical for an individual to take the attitude that he or she does not need to know anything about the internal details of a machine because someone else will build it, maintain it, and fix any problems that arise? Does your answer depend on whether the machine is a computer, automobile, nuclear power plant, or toaster?”

It is ethical for an individual to take the attitude that he or she does not need to know anything about the internal details of a machine because someone else will build it, maintain it, and fix any problems that arise.

My opinion is, that most of the time it is simply not a question. Our technology is so advanced, that it is almost impossible to even list the names of the machines we use in our everyday life. All machines are made of parts, numerous and different parts. It’s practically impossible to be able to know how they made. Be it a household appliance or a nuclear reactor, the user, operator of the device usually cannot know the machine’s internal details. So this side is not a question of ethic in case of the user.

But we should investigate some other participants of the business. There are ethical questions about the decision makers. Although they are also human beings, who cannot be professionals in all aspects of business and technology in the same time, they are responsible for their decisions. And questions about ethics arise when the decision maker’s decision affects other peoples’ life, which is a common situation. For example Brendan Borrell in Scientific American (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-a-pitot-tube, 2009) stated that there is a chance that the pitot tube caused the tragedy of Air France Filght 447. In this article he states that “Airbus’s pitot tubes were known to have icing problems, and Air France had begun replacing them on April 27 when an improved version was released.” In that case the top decision makers are probably not engineers. They do not design pitot cubes themselves. But it is definitely not ethical to let thoose airplanes fly without assuring that they are able to be sure that thoose planes are safe to fly. This doesn’t mean that they have to know the internal details of the pitot cube, but it’s not ethical to make the decision, which affects thousands of people’s life, without acquiring the information with at least the minimum information the decision maker needs to make the safe decision.

Edward Cody (Washington Post, August 1, 2009) wrote “Airbus said Friday that airlines flying its A330 and A340 long-haul jetliners should replace most of the planes’ external speed sensors that investigators suspect may have played a role in the crash of an Air France A330 on June 1.” The decision makers in the various airlines are probably not pitot tube designers, but this raises an important question: Is it ethical to allow flying thoose airplanes, until they are not completely sure about the safety of the whole plane?

Reference list:

Brendan Borrell (2009) ’What is a pitot tube?’, Scientific American [Online]. Available from: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-a-pitot-tube (Accessed: 03. October 2009).

Edward Cody (2009) ’ Airbus Says Speed Sensors Should Be Replaced’, Washington Post [Online]. Available from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/31/AR2009073101195.html?hpid=moreheadlines (Accessed: 03. October 2009).