COMPUTER ETHICS

Impact Analysis

ZAINAB ARAB
1234
Introduction
This discussion highlights the impact and describes how technology has
demonstrated itself in every field alternately developing and alarming our environment
and the whole world. This advancement in technology has produced many social
problems by threatening the privacy, integrity and personal lives of people. In every
area of world, planning and development of every institution, Technology has an
influence which cannot be neglected. In most cases, this influence is so strong that an
organization cannot even survive without the technology. In past few decades, a very
powerful and emerging profession has been introduces named as Information
technology or information system which has no boundaries and people having
knowledge of this technology are implementing it into business. Meanwhile computer
technology is helping the society making the world as global village, its impacting social
ethics and privacy. Computer ethics focuses on quality of best practices of experts for
all the people related to computer who are developing new technologies every day.

Impact Analysis
Un-ethical uses of technology include invading privacy, intellectual
property theft, identity theft, malware attacks and financial theft. Our privacy gets
disturbed due to computer crimes like sniffing, hacking and other ways of negative
programing and these crimes are impacting our lives in the form of fraud, child
pornography, financial loss, account hacking, websites hacking, loss of personal and
professional data and social decay. In our homes, computers, laptops, TV,
smartphones, tablets and other technological gadgets have considerable attention.
They are essential for communication and entertainment. Since it's always on and there,
it's so much easier to spend time alone, in our own world, on devices. Smartphones in
particular have the potential to separate us from one another. It takes an extra effort to
stay away from it for a few hours or for a day. We are obsessed with checking news,
checking social media, checking text messages any time of the day, and it just doesn't
look good to us. I would like to mention the quote of Erika McGinty who is research
scientist in North America, she says, “Although I shorten my Facebook friends to people
I know personally or know well, I find that over time we talk and see less because we
can only "like" or comment on other people's Facebook pages to give the impression
that we are close”[1]. Social and emotional lives of teenagers have been impacted badly
because they prefer to seek less real-life interactions with their friends and relatives as
they can interact and communicate online easily. Following chart shows the data of
average per person daily time spent on social media.
 Tim e Spent each Year
Time Spent each Year
180

160
153
140 144
135
120 126
100 109
101
95
80 90

60

40

20

0
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

Figure 1 Average Time Spent [2]

Regarding increasing consumerism, E-commerce is changing the way people buy their
goods and services and its effecting on the relationship between technology and
society. So, retailers have developed strategies to keep pace with the market. These
strategies differ from creating virtual stores (for example. Websites) and digital social
media development for data mining and spam. The development of e-commerce was
not one simple operation as it depends on many technological and social variables. For
e-commerce, technology is neither the cause nor the solution to their problems. It's only
a tool that allows public and private initiatives to develop business models online.
Technology has given a lot of means of communication and by using these
communications, buyers has easy and fast access to the markets. We being a
consumer can buy simply by using the mobile applications and order online. It has
increased the market consumerism. Technology has made it possible to handle a lot
customer online easily. A lot of entrepreneurs like Jeff bezos CEO of amazon, Pierre
Omidyar founder of Ebay have gained huge economic benefits. Following chart shows
the increase in annual net revenue of Amazon from 2013 to 2019.
 A nnual Net R evenue
Annual Net Revenue
300

280.52
250
232.89
200

177.87
150
135.99
100 107.01
88.99
74.45
50 61.09

0
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

Figure 2 Amazon Annual Net Revenue [3]

One of the major concerns and negative influence of technology is it has outplaced our
privacy protections and our digital information can be tracked by many corporations by
many ways which were not thinkable before. A best line said by well-known actor Will
Smith, “I was very dumb at 14 when there was no Facebook, no Twitter but I was dumb
with private.” Which means that people are being exposed to privacy risks through the
use of technology. Our information stored in the datastores are being sold to buyers for
both legal and illegal use. Hundreds of social media accounts are being hacked and
people are being blackmailed over sharing their personal data by the hackers. A rough
estimate is 6.8 million social media accounts are compromised or hacked each day and
personal and private data of users are being sniffed.

Conclusion
Focusing on information system failure and its research can shed light on
IT ethics. Computer ethics should be a part of the academic for students as they will
communicate with the world of information and may be misled without direction. If the
churches do well, they will definitely have a good influence on the progress of a good
nation, and thus a good world.

References

Bibliography
[1] McGinty, Erika. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/07/03/the-negatives-of-
digital-life/ The negatives of digitals
[2] https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/average-daily-time-on-social-media
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266282/annual-net-revenue-of-amazoncom/
(2012-2019) Annual net revenue of Amazon