1.   Identify and describe 5 specific capabilities of computing (e.g., speed, permanence/storage) made possible or enhanced by computing technology.

2.   Select one of the capabilities you identified and discuss its relationship to the following issues raised by the application of the technology:

• Privacy
• Ownership
• Control
• Accuracy
• Security 3. Describe the areas of potential IT policy decisions that may be triggered by your selected capability.
  

1.) Capabilities of computing

I chose the following capabilities: connectivity, multimedia handling, accuracy, fast mathematical calculations, repetitive operations.

Connectivity: it is the first in my list and it’s the most important capability of the computers for me. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to learn here for example. My whole life is built on computing and nowadays mostly around Internet, so it’s an important feature for me. Connectivit means that you are able to communicate with virtually any connected computer user in the whole world. It’s unbeleivable how much nations can be found here or in internet based games for example.
Multimedia handling: This is the ability of recording and playing voice and video content on the computers.
Accuracy: computer operations are accurate. The result will always be the same, doesn’t matters how many times we make it repeated or which computer we use.
Fast mathematical calculations: it’s one of the most important capabilities of computing. It makes us able to search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, drive airplanes, forecast weather, etc.
Repetitive operations: a computer will never be tired. It can repeat the same operation again and again with the same result.

2.) Issues raised by connectivity
I obviously choose connectivity from my list to discuss. I do it, because it’s very close to me, and because it raises all the mentioned issues. In most cases, I’ll refer this capability as Internet, because currently this is the most used way of connecting computers.

Privacy
On the internet, this is surely an issue. Timothy J. Walton (2000) wrote in the first sentence of his article: “The right to privacy in Internet activity is a serious issue facing society.”. There are many problems mentioned by the author, like unsolicited e-mail, usage of cookies, building of huge company databases about the customers’ behaviour, selling customers’ data.

Ownership
It’s a huge problem nowadays. First of all, the ownership of the information. Internet is huge and mostly anonymous. Nowadays it’s moving towards a more and more open information publishing. Free websites, blogs, community networks make it very hard to take care of the ownership of the information. Another problem, which is closely related to this one is the Intellectual Property Rights. Who can prove, who is the owher of an article or a novel for example? How can it be assured, that no body will state, that it’s his/her work?

Control
Issue of control is raised by connectity daily. First you can think of control of the computer itself. Nowadays there are many ways hackers can use to take control of the connected computer you use. There are troyans, backdoor opening viruses, password crackers, network sniffers. This is a very important issue nowadays. Another issue is that influencing masses through information flow is much easyer than it ever was. In Hungary the biges “mediahack” was when a clever journalist made fool of the whole Hungarian press. According to Sz. I. M. (2007), Gábor Varga found out an imaginary story about the Madzsari tribe in Africa. Madzsari sounds very similar to Magyar, which is the Hungarian word for Hungarian. The story was simple and wrote that an imaginary Swiss institute, African Research Institute was the source of the information. It wrote, that www.ar-institute.ch is the homepage of the institute. The author intentionally hide some traps in the article, for exapmle, there were no such institute, and even the homepage didn’t exist. For the first time, the whole Hungarian press, including the bigest newspapers wrote about it as a fact and the bigest television stations presented it as a huge sensation and as a proof of Hungarian greatness. Nobody checked the source and nobody tried to open the website. The first one who tried to check it was SZ.I.M, the journalist of my favourite Hungarian portal.

Accuracy
Connectivity helps us to gather more accurate information quickly. You can ask anybody in no time or check an information website in minutes, so connectivity helps us to imporove accuracy of information. Although there are a lot of difficulties because there are numerous information sources and you cannot always tell which one is reliable.  Robert Harris (2007) writes about very good methods of evaluating information found on the internet. He says that information needs to be avaluated carefully because unlike traditional information sources, internet articles usually published without a preliminary approval process.

Security
Security is a complex idea. Because, what is security? Security is basically the ability to keep privacy, ownership and control. A house is secure, when nobody can enter it without the owner’s will. A computer is secure if nobody can enter it without the owner’s will. Nowadays it’s not an easy thing to keep your computer secure.

Mixed issues

All the mentioned issues are connected to each other. Let’s look at just one exapmle. According to Randy James (2009) Internet censorship in China not only makes it impossible to reach specific websites, but when you try to view some information, you have to provide your personal details. They restrict access to pornography websites and many political topics. I’m sure, that this “total” control helps to improve the security level of Chineese internet, but affects privacy, accuracy and control, too. We say, it’s bad. But what we do with company firewalls and proxes? Limit the access to information. And in modern companies access to internet is not an anonymous activity any more. And what did USA  – and many other countries – try in the schools? A proxy like control system to limit the access to specific information.

3.) IT policy decisions triggered by connectivity
Connectivity triggers numerous policy decisions. Maybe the most common is that almost all companies access internet through a proxy servers. Many companies limit the access to websites and internet services with a well defined internet policy. Some companies even limit the access to the internet with policy decisions. Policies can be written ones or software / hardware forced ones.
The National B2B Centre (n.d.) developed a very detailed guide about making internet policies. They write that making clearly stated internet usage policies to help the employees to follow it and the company to defend itself when an employee makes unacceptable things using the company’s resources on the internet.

Reference list:

Randy James (2009) A Brief History of: Chinese Internet Censorship [Online] Available from: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1885961,00.html (Accessed: 10. February 2010)

SZ.I.M (2007) Magyar törzset fedeztek fel Kongóban? [Online] Available from: http://index.hu/tudomany/tortenelem/magykonfg367/ (Accessed: 09. February 2010)

The National B2B Centre (n.d.) Introduce an internet and email policy [Online] Available from: http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/layer?topicId=1074402338 (Accessed: 10. February 2010)
Timothy J. Walton (2000) Internet Privacy Law [Online] Available from: http://www.netatty.com/privacy/privacy.html (Accessed 09. February 2010)

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)

Most IT experts in the world would be suprised on my statement: the small sized floppy disk was invented by a Hungarian, Marcell Jánosi. Before him, the connonly used disk was the 8 inch sized, very flexible IBM invented floppy disk. This disk was big, vulnerable to physical damage and was difficult to transport. According to computernostalgia.net, the original concept of the 3^1/4 inch floppy disk was developed by Marcell Janosi in 1973, two years before IBM invented the 5 ^½ floppy disk (http://www.computernostalgia.net/articles/HistoryoftheFloppyDisk.htm, 2009). Intrestingly this was the year, when Ernő Rubik invented the world famous Rubik Cube. Unfortunately for political reasons the Hungarian state didn’t renew the patent on this invention, and that made the Japaneese manufacturers able to produce a floppy disk. They started to make a product which was, let’s say, very similar to the original version, which was introduced to them personally by Mr. Janosi in Hugary. A photo of the original disk and the drive can be seen here: http://index.hu/cikkepek/0702/tech/azelso/.gdata/a6_03.jpg Even Jack Tremiel, the CEO of the Commodore factory travelled to Hungary on his private jet to buy this product according to an interview with Mr. Janosi, published on Index.hu portal (http://index.hu/tech/hardver/jm0206/, 2007). As you can see, this disk became widely used on the world with minor changes before the mass production. It’s a thing we can be proud of, but Marcell Jánosi never earned a cent for it, because of the Communist state’s regulations.

There were several great Hungarian inventors in the past, including the first flat screen TV in 1936, by Kálmán Tihanyi (http://www.pcma-tv99.org/sales-history-of-lcd-tvs, 2007), but since my task is to write about data storage, I mention a very intresting new development. Since I’m in contact with an employee of  Holografika, which is an invertor and producer of 3d holographic displays, I decided to write about the holografic data storage. Amongst other researchers, the Hungarians also working on this topics. Although we already use some topics based on very similar technology, like Blue-Ray disks, for example, there is a very intresting development made by Hungarians. On Budapest University of Technology and Economics researchers  made a working holographic storage device. In an abstract, published on SPIE Digital Library tey wrote: “A raw density as high as 2.77 bit/µm2 has been achieved without multiplexing in a compact, portable read/write sytem at 532 nm allowing more than 1000 readout without data loss.” (http://spiedl.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=PSISDG004991000001000034000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes, 2003) I can see this affort as a promising one, since it uses the currently known fastest substance to store, read, write data. It uses all the real world dimensions, three and the fourth dimension, time to store data. In my oppinion, this is the future of data storage. Mike Houghton on enterpriseitplanet.com also thinks so: “The future of data storage will almost certainly lie in the technology of holographic storage for the enterprise market. With a predicted shelf life of up to 100 years or more, which means we can expect at least 50 years and disk-sized storage capacities of over 300 gigabytes per disk, the equivalent of 462 CDs, it’s a safe bet that this is where we’re going with our storage solution.” (http://www.enterpriseitplanet.com/storage/features/article.php/3530796 , 2005). Since science always succeeded to develop new and new technologies in the past, it seems obvious to me, that this is not the end of the evolution of the data sorage technology. But what will we see next, who will make the next step? I only know, who made the first. He was Denes Gabor, a Nobel prize winner Hungarian scientist, who invented holography itself (http://www.answers.com/topic/dennis-gabor, n.d).

Reference list:

• Answers.com (n.d) Scientist:  Dennis Gabor [Online]. Available from: http://www.answers.com/topic/dennis-gabor (Accessed: 05. October 2009)
• Computernostalgia.net (2009) History of the Floppy Disk [Online]. Available from: http://www.computernostalgia.net/articles/HistoryoftheFloppyDisk.htm (Accessed: 05. October 2009)
• Index.hu (2009) The first floppy drive [Online]. Available from: http://index.hu/cikkepek/0702/tech/azelso/.gdata/a6_03.jpg (Accessed: 05. October 2009)
• Index.hu (2007) Jánosi Marcell, a bűvös flopi atyja [Online]. Available from: http://index.hu/tech/hardver/jm0206/ (Accessed: 05. October 2009)
• Mike Houghton (2005) Holographic Backup: The Future of Enterprise Data Storage [Online] Enterpriseitplanet.com. Available from: http://www.enterpriseitplanet.com/storage/features/article.php/3530796 (Accessed: 05. October 2009)
• SPIE Digital Library (2009) Polarization holographic data storage using azobenzene polyster as storage material [Online]. Available from: http://spiedl.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=PSISDG004991000001000034000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes,%202003 tvs (Accessed: 05. October 2009)
• TV At It’s Finest (2007) Sales History Of LCD Tvs [Online]. Available from: http://www.pcma-tv99.org/sales-history-of-lcd-tvs (Accessed: 05. October 2009)

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).