“Ethical Decision Making” is a free informational app for iPhone that helps weigh the ethical implications of a decision. It was developed based on guidelines created at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.
In Tuesday's print edition of the American-Statesman and on MyStatesman.com, you can find this week's Digital Savant column, which is about tech ethics.
Our smart phones and online access give us unprecedented freedom to get up to no good and create mischief for ourselves, but without clear guidance, how do we know whether to take advantage or not? Should we have a built-in moral compass for what’s right and wrong in an age of instant information and eroding privacy, or are the lines too ambiguous for many of us to determine the right action?
Here’s an excerpt from the column:
Today, is it wrong to post online a cellphone video of someone in distress on the street rather than helping the person? What about downloading a leaked music album against an artist's wishes that is already widely available? You're unlikely to get caught, but isn't that stealing?
And does having these tools when others do not give us more power to abuse others? Do we really understand the spiderweb of effects that happen when we choose to invade a person's privacy or to impersonate someone online?
"It's always critical to remember, the choices people are making are aided and abetted by technology. They're still the ones making the choice," Alexander Howard said. "There's still a human being looking at a given situation and deciding to do X."
You can find the full column here. Let us know what you think in the comments!
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