Goggles of the Future "HUD" Heads up Display

I love to snowboard; I can never get enough of it. So when i hear about new technologies being incorporated into the ski industry I get pretty excited. Several goggle companies this year are putting out a new goggle that allows you to track top speed, distance traveled, air times on jumps, vertical and horizontal distances and so much more. All of this is displayed in the bottom corner of your goggles. Know you can record your entire statistic for that day of ridding. This could help winter alleles can they can see specifically how fast they hit a jump and how much distance the covered before they land. Making the rider and there equipment more in tuned. I know right when I’m about to hit a jump the speed I’m approaching with is important and these goggles could help evaluate rider stress making the rider preform move smoothly adding style to the riders tricks. “HUD” has been used since World War II and is being incorporated into environments more and more. Most new cars have used this technology to improve the driver’s awareness.  Army has also been using this new technology incorporating it into the battle field allowing soldier’s to see real time data of the battle field. The HUD could give locations display maps and distance to targets. HUD’s in my opinion can improve our daily lives so we have an ethical responsibility to incorporate them into our daily lives. Now cell phone companies are looking at using HUDs for their phones using a monocle type lens that you would place in your eye and the screen in the monocle would display all your smart phone information. There might be some negative implications from this technology but looking at it from a utilitarianism point of view this technology will benefit more people that it could harm.  There are three major brand that have put out HUD goggles this year and the y include: Okaly, Smith and Zeal.

 http://www.notcot.com/archives/2012/10/oakley-airwave-goggle-with-hea.php

Internet Restrictions in China

 

The United State constitution protects Americans right to free speech or is supposed to. Although we have laws that allow every citizen to practice free speech the government still restricts certain media (FCC). China on the other hand has taken this to a whole new level. China as laws that allows the government’s to monitor and restrict internet use to its ISP (internet Service Providers) and citizens. As human beings most people believe that when we are born we have certain rights in this world, right to life is one and so can argue freedom of speech could be one. I think China is making many ethical mistakes by restricting internet use. From a utilitarianism perspective restricting the internet will have negative effects on the majority of society. Not allowing equal opportunity to education and ability to use it to gain employment, internment, and communication. Other countries have different cultures and societies and for us Americans to say what china is doing is wrong, but form a chainman’s perspective are they? Supposedly one benefit to china restricting site on the internet will help promote Chines to buy Chines product boosting their economy. Some people may just see the one side and say that’s bad, but there are some obvious benefits that could come from a country restricting the internet content. In my opinion the cons out weigh the pros by far. Restricting internet content I think is in violation of our human right to free speech. Even with restrictions there can be ways around them as explained in the article in the link below. China is famous for centuries now at keeping outsiders out. Look at history you have one of mankind’s greatest accomplishments with the building of the Great Wall of China. This wall was to help protect but mainly keep the Chines in and the Mongols out. Now we have internet restrictions which kind of do the same thing ironically. Do you think governments should have the right to control internet content?  

 

P.S. Thanks for reading my blog this semester. The main point was to engage with readers about current events that deal with computer ethics. I hope you enjoyed some of the discussion on here. Until next have a good one.

 

 

http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/internet-restrictions-in-china-880043.html

Scientific visualization

 

Simulation and modeling is a huge area in computers science that has helped many other fields’ progress. Scientific visualization is a revolutionary technique used to display data and offer alternative user interface design than most are use-to. I found and article on line that explains this well. I also watched a TED talk on a researches scientific visualization project. His talk consisted on two main projects one where he show you how data can be processed a presented to a user that hasn’t been done before. The other project was a collaborative work from people all around the world that created still frames for a tribute video for the late Johnny Cash. This new visualization technique mentioned first, visually allows the user to see patterns and other phenomenon that you wouldn’t see in a table or spread sheet of data. Some ethical issues arise from these new techniques. Data mining plays an important role in this technique because you need large sums of data and where do you get the data to run these simulations. We have talked about data mining as a class and it implications. I would have to say that this form of data mining is more ethically just than most because the reason for the mining are educational and not for marketing purposes. The field of data mining offers much abstract visualization related to these visualization types. In the TED talked I watched one of the visual data displays he presented was a program that is trying to visually represent the world, and the user interface makes it active and touch oriented. I think anyone can upload pictures of places around the world and the program combines all the pictures in a way it’s like walking around the world visually but digitally, it’s really quit fascinating and when it comes to projects like these that might have some ethical issues with them but ultimately benefit the majority of society (utilitarianism). Check out the article below to find out more and tell if you find any other ethical issues or if you those programs should use data mining even if it is for good?

 

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/s/scientific_visualization.htm

Internet Patents, privacy rights and court cases

 

Today in class we discussed property and property rights. Copy right laws have been established to help protect people’s products and ideas. Protecting intellectual property is a challenging subject because it can be hard to prove that you thought of an idea first. Patents are different than copy right laws and are more used to protect inventions. Trademarks are more used for protecting logos, titles, and sayings. The NET act is a pretty recent law to help protect property rights on the internet. All of these laws have been established to help protect individuals and companies. In 2011 the US passed the ACTA which is a bill to help protect things like copy rights and patents on the internet. One of the most recent famous copy right, and patent disputes was back in 2004 when Facebook was first being deployed on the internet. There was a court battle over Facebook when it first came out at Harvard University. The court battle was over who should get credit (ownership) for the site. The fight had a lot to-do with intellectual property and who owned it. The court case ended up dividing the ownership of Facebook to several people and paying out several others for the use of their rights and ideas. In more recent times Yahoo has sued Facebook over patents rights regarding advertisements. Stated in an article I read “Yahoo sued Facebook over 10 patents that include methods and systems for advertising on the Web, opening the first major legal battle among big technology companies in social media.” You can find a link to this article at the bottom of the post. This court case help sets some guidelines for patent right infringement on the internet. The funny thing is that Yahoo and Facebook have been business partners for a while now and the fact that Yahoo is suing Facebook is a surprising move to some. While companies like Facebook and Google have thrived in recent years, Yahoo has not. Yahoo has over 3,000 patents while Facebook only has 160, according to the article. The ethics involved in deciding who owns what can be a cumbersome task. I think that is important to protect people’s property and intellectual property and court case like Yahoo vs. Facebook will help us figure out how these laws should be enforced. “"If what Yahoo is saying is literally true, then it seems like a lot of companies would be liable," said Shubha Ghosh, a professor who specializes in intellectual property at The University of Wisconsin Law School. But he added, much would depend on whether a judge defines the patents broadly or narrowly.” This was mentioned in the article, and brings up a good point. I think we have an ethical responsibility to better define these policies so there is so much digression of the judge. As professional we should have standard to follow in deciding things like this. Judges should have a set of common standards for judging things because one judge could have a narrow view will another could have a broader view in what a patent or copyright might include.

 
Links:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/12/us-yahoo-facebook-lawsuit-idUSBRE82B18M20120312
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/06/yahoo-and-facebook-said-to-settle-patent-lawsuits/

 

Emerging technologies

 



Emerging technologies is a huge subject in computer ethics. There are many ethical issues brought up by emerging technologies. Some examples of emerging technologies are: robotics, biomedical, and transportation just to name a few. The main problem with emerging technologies is that their full ethical impact on societies is not fully understood or even researched. Some ethical issues brought on by robotics, and nanobots are invasion of privacy, medical applications, and warfare. Nanobots are an interesting subfield of robotics on a molecular level. Applications of nanobots could be used for a variety of reasons such as mechanical fixes, medical surgeries, spying (espionage) and warfare. My question to the reader is using ethical backing should countries, companies and governments restrict the applications for emerging technologies such as nanobots. Should we only consider the medical applications why or why not? Emerging technologies in transportation also have some ethical implications. We now have the technologies to efficiently make vehicles that produce less carbon monoxide. With global warming being realized as a threat reducing carbon monoxide is an ethical issue every person on the planet is a part of. I think we have an ethical duty as primary care takers of this planet to implement these new transportation technologies more and maybe develop policies to reduce old transportation ways and promote new more efficient transportation, such as: biofuels, solar, and battery operated transportation devices. As new technologies emerge into societies the ethical problems that arise from them need to be addressed differently than technologies are now. These technologies could have many positive effects on society such as decrease in carbon monoxcide into the atmosphere which could lead to better quality of life in urban areas; clearing up issue related to air pollution and could help prevent disease associated with air pollution. If we adopt and make policies that reinforce new fuel sources could help prevent construction site such as the tar sands in Alberta, Canada which is the world’s largest construction site created to produce petroleum based product lick oil and gas. The pollution created from this site could be helped cleaned up on a molecular scale using nanobots that programed to filter toxic waste. There are also negative effects this technology could have nanobots could be used by governments to spy on its citizens and invade our privacy. Deciding what negative and positive effects these technologies have on society are important in deciding polices.  

 

Here is a couple related articles.

http://www.merkle.com/papers/FAZ000911.html

http://www.technologyreview.com/article/418535/tr10-solar-fuel/

Post #2 Internet/browser Tracking

Internet Tracking

 
           

Web Cookies, are a method of collecting user data. Cookies are basically a parcel of text sent by a server to a Web browser and then sent back unchanged by the browser each time it accesses that server. Things like your shopping carts and type of websites visited are kept track of and solid to advertising companies. Internet browsers and online companies use this information use this information for marketing schemes. It was mention in another class mates blog that Google recently change its privacy statement so that it lets users know that Google will be selling internet activity to third parties. Many ethical issue arise form internet tracking. Is it the user ethical responsibility to know how and when its being track or is it the companies ethical responsibility. looking at this from a contract based theory is a good idea because most sites you visited and organizations your involved with have some sort of privacy statement telling the user how the organization handles data and if it not mentioned in the article there should be some policy that companies violate and should be reprimanded for. Third party cookies, however, pose a higher threat to security and often come from banner ad services that track a user’s moves throughout the Internet, presenting ads and other information based on what it determines your interests may be. (Spanbauer). I think policies should be developed the protect the user more and puts ethical responsibility more on the companies. Many people don't realize that their privacy on the internet isn't what they believe it to be. If you chose to be monitored maybe as a user you should get some sort of compensation for giving up some of your privacy like if a particular company watches your internet activity maybe they could offer you special deals on products which in the end will help the company even more do to a possibility of increased sales. So next time your surfing remember some one is watching you. Here are three article I found that were interesting to me.

 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-search/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204880404577225380456599176.html
http://www.ethicalinvestigator.com/internet/

Post #1 Apple Vs. Samsung, Technologies and Patents from Professional Ethics View

Post #1
Technologies and Patents from Professional Ethics View
Apple Vs. Samsung
Some articles explaining Apple Vs. Samsung case.
 
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerkay/2012/08/28/apple-a-monopoly-it-could-happen/
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/08/apple-versus-samsung
http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnshaughnessy/2012/08/26/why-the-apple-vs-samsung-verdict-is-a-big-mistake/
 

            Hi my name is Jesse I'm taking Computer Ethics this fall at the University of Montana and would like to use this blog to discuses ethical issues involving cyber ethics. The stand I take is neither right or wrong the point is to have and educated and informed conversation involving cyber ethics.

            You might have heard recently that Apple won a Controversial case over Samsung a South Korean Based company. Apple sued Samsung over patents concerning the Apple's new version of the iphone (iPhone 5) and their tablets. Apple won the court case in California with a restitution of 1 billion to be paid by Samsung to Apple and Samsung is not allowed to sell their tablet 10.1 in the United States. What interest me most about this article is that some of the patents that Apple won against Samsung are controversial. Things like a rectangle shaped smart phone. I'm not sure how ethical the actions by these two corporations are, but it seems like you shouldn't be able to have a patent on a geometrical shape. It's like if a cereal company had a patent on a cereal box that's rectangle, every cereal box is rectangle but other cereals are not suing over it. I think one thing Apple realizes is the design of the phone plays huge into marketing the phone but Apple has become the most valued company in history (before it was Microsoft which peeked in late 1999). So one could say that its not ethical for Apple to sue Samsung because the are already worth so much that they should allow equal opportunity for other companies to progress. The one thing that comes to mind is that Apple has the potential or if not already a monopoly and there are currant laws that forbid monopolies that maybe should be applied to Apple (Microsoft went through monopoly regulations). People have mentioned in other articles that granting Apple this win slowdowns the progress or further development by other companies by limiting them to things like geometric shapes on phones. People have been using things like geometric shapes to build and create things for thousands of years why should Apple get the soul right to certain shapes concerning development of technologies. Determining what is ethically right for these companies is hard to decide. Apply ethical theories might help us determine what these companies are doing ethical wrong. Utilitarianism Theory might imply that Apple shouldn't sue Samsung because less technology will be available to the population potentially causing problems such as lack of educationa and opportunity, brought on by the court case. Utilitarianism basically boils down to maximizes overall "happiness" of the majority of the population. If Apple hadn't of sued there is a great potential to maximizes overall "happiness" of the majority of the population. One flaw might be that of is Samsung is stealing form Apple and that is morally wrong. My argument is that even if they're stealing its benefiting to the majority of the population and therefore can be ethically viable under Utilitarianism.

When leaving a post here are some questions I came up with for food for thought:

What do you believe to be the ethical issues of this court case?

Can you come up to any solution to help resolve the conflict?

What ethical theories can you apply to this article?

Should the United Stated upgraded it laws for patents?
One could notice that there has been a set of standards in the production of flat screen TVs and things like basic shape are not being patented. Should Apple be able to have patents on things most companies around the world would consider a standard design for all products relating to that market?