1.6 Impact of Digital Tech

Question 1

Impact

Answer 1

Technology impacts our lives in both positive and negative ways.

Information is easily accessible and can be exchanged on an almost immediate basis. This has changed how much personal information is shared.

It also means that it is important to be considerate of all users’ needs, for example when choosing colours for a company website.

Identifying impacts allows us to make better decisions as we develop and use new technologies.

Awareness of impact can help avoid introducing personal biases into systems, which could affect users.

Question 2

Morals

Answer 2

are the internal principles that an individual uses to make decisions about what is right and wrong. Your ‘personal compass’.

These principles are not always shared by all members of a community, but they often originate from commonly held beliefs and are reinforced through interaction with other people.

Question 3

Ethics

Answer 3

Refer to what is right and wrong and how people should behave.

Ethics are shared morals that a particular group of people recognise as necessary to ensure that the group behaves positively based on its own context.

Codes of conduct, rules, laws, standards etc.

Question 4

Society

Answer 4

A society is one or more groups of people that exist with shared beliefs, practices, and ethics.

Question 5

Culture

Answer 5

The shared beliefs, practices, and ethics of a group of people within a society is known as a group’s culture.

Therefore, a society can be multicultural, being made up of more than one group, each with distinct beliefs, practices, and ethics, with some of those also shared with other cultures within the society.

Question 6

Cultural Issues

Answer 6

Refers to the ideas, behaviour, beliefs and values of a group of people.

Cultural issues relate to how computers have impacted our lives, including:

The widespread use of ‘disposable’ devices
The ways in which people interact with each other (social media)
Changes in workplace
Replacing human roles in organisations
Widespread data collection about individuals
Access to entertainment and social interaction
Workforce monitoring

Question 7

Employment

Answer 7

Technology has changed the type of work available and introduced new ways that people can work in existing jobs.

Technology has also enabled the continuation of work in conditions previously impossible (such as the remote working response to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020).

It has affected employees’ work-based interactions and changed the way that we communicate, with videoconferencing becoming a normal experience for many employees.

Question 8

Ethical & Cultural Issues

Answer 8

Ethical and cultural issues stemming from the use of computers and digital devices include:

Providing a means of access to inappropriate or illegal content
Safety decisions and judgements made by machines, for example, self-driving vehicles
Social platforms or media that enable cyberbullying, trolling or sexting
Social pressure to be online and purchase more of the latest technology
Not everyone can pay for digital devices or access broadband internet. This leads to a ‘digital divide’
The ‘always on’ culture and an increase in the reliance on computers in the workplace is leading to an increase in eyestrain and RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) from prolonged use of screens and keyboards
The ‘right’ level of censorship and monitoring of computer usage and viewable content. These decisions may be made by parents, companies or by entire nations.

Question 9

Employment impact and ethical considerations

Answer 9

The culture of many organisations has changed to enable remote working practices.

Employees can work from anywhere and teams can be entirely dependent on virtual interactions, or use a hybrid approach with opportunities to meet up with co-workers to prevent individuals from feeling isolated.

If the employer has got it right, the workforce responds by feeling empowered, valued, and, above all, happy at work, improving the organisation’s productivity.

Question 10

Automated Decision Making

Answer 10

Computer programs can complete a task by making decisions based on conditions set by a human.

If the conditions are not set correctly or they do not represent all possible situations, the program may not be suitable for its intended task. This may result in people being unfairly advantaged or disadvantaged.

Examples of this have been seen in:

recruitment processes, where people with particular characteristics have been treated unfairly,
policing, where existing equality issues have been amplified.

Question 11

UAVS / Drones

Answer 11

UAV = Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, or drone

There are plans for 165 miles of drone superhighway that will link airspace over the Midlands and the south of England.

This will enable a range of activities, such as the delivery of vaccines and blood samples and support for search and rescue missions, to be carried out using drones piloted by computers.

Question 12

AI and Machine Learning

Answer 12

Unlike automatic systems, autonomous machines are self-sufficient and require no human intervention. They can learn and adjust to their changing environment.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are the branches of computer science that are used in the development of autonomous machines.

Question 13

Artificial Intelligence

Answer 13

The research and development of computer systems that determine the relationships between inputs and output to make predictions, instead of following programmed instructions.

Question 14

Machine Learning

Answer 14

Algorithms that learn the relationship between inputs and outputs in order to make predictions.

Question 15

Autonomous Vehicles

Answer 15

Driverless cars will be able to communicate with each other and use data from their environment to reduce accidents and make traffic jams a thing of the past.

However, there are several examples of accidents that have been caused by decisions made by autonomous cars.

Sometimes this is because insufficient training data has been used. It is difficult to produce adequate conditions that the cars can use to determine what they should consider to be a hazard.

Question 16

Lethal Autonomous Weapons

Answer 16

Weapons that can make decisions about a battlefield environment and strike targets without human intervention are known as autonomous weapons, although it is questionable whether these machines are truly ‘autonomous’.

Although there are claims that they can reduce civilian casualties, there are concerns that ‘autonomous’ weapons may target civilians in error.

Question 17

Bias

Answer 17

A bias is a disproportionate balance in favour of or against an idea or thing.

People often associate bias with being for or against an individual, a group, or a belief, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair.

Question 18

Algorithmic Bias

Answer 18

However, in science and engineering fields, a bias can also be a systematic error.

The measure of error that shows how far away the actual output is from the predicted output is called algorithmic bias.

If the error is significant, the model has not reflected the real-world relationship between the input data and what the model predicts. The model is therefore said to have prediction bias — favouring one output over others.

Question 19

Ethical Bias

Answer 19

AI that has algorithmic bias (prediction bias) can output a prediction that has ethical bias.

Automation promises efficiency and fairness because individual programmers and their morals, or teams of programmers and their ethics, are removed from the decision-making.

Question 20

Echo Chamber

Answer 20

Machine learning is used to analyse huge data sets to find patterns and make decisions on what sort of content you might like to see on social media.

The cultural impact of this is that people with similar interests and views will be shown similar content that they all ‘like’.

This ‘echo chamber’ effect, with individuals’ views being reinforced as they are all shown similar content, can prevent people in the society from having access to diverse views, limiting their experience and understanding of other cultures.

Question 21

Negative Environmental Issues

Answer 21

The negative environmental impacts of widespread computer use include:

Large global energy requirements to run computer systems and data centres
The use of rare and non-renewable metals and minerals
Some components are made from toxic materials which are a hazard to the environment and human health if not disposed of properly

Question 22

Upgrade Culture

Answer 22

The length of time for which we use each individual piece of technology has become very short.

Upgrade culture is a term used to refer to the cycle that sees most of us replacing our most trusted devices every few years with the latest products.

Where do you see your role in this process as a consumer?
Is it unethical to want to upgrade your phone after only a few years of use?
Should phone companies slow their development, and would this reduce innovation?

Question 23

Planned Obsolescence

Answer 23

This is the process that some device manufacturers have used to make their devices unfashionable or no longer usable.

In 2017, Apple admitted that older iPhone models were deliberately slowed down through software updates, arguing that this was to extend the life of older phones as their batteries became less capable.

Question 24

Rare Minerals

Answer 24

Some components of smartphones cannot be created without rare chemical elements, such as europium and dysprosium.

(In fact, there are 83 stable non-radioactive elements in the periodic table, and 70 of them are used in some capacity in smartphones.)

Upgrade culture means that there is high demand for these materials, and deposits are becoming more and more depleted.

There are currently no alternative renewable materials that are as effective.

Question 25

Mining

Answer 25

Device manufacturers often buy materials from the companies that offer the lowest prices.

To maintain their profit margin, these companies have to extract as much material as possible as cheaply as they can.

This can lead to unethical mining practices, with landscapes reformed and wildlife habitats destroyed.

Moving away from the environmental impact briefly, it is also important to consider the fact that mining these precious metals is often a hazardous occupation.

Cobalt is often used in smartphone batteries. More than half the world’s cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the use of child labour is prevalent.

The mining work is hazardous, there is little in the way of protective equipment, and chronic lung conditions and breathing issues caused by the dust are a persistent problem for miners and their families.

Question 26

Energy Use

Answer 26

The process of manufacturing devices consumes large amounts of fossil fuels.

This means that there are additional pressures on societies that are working towards being carbon-neutral to slow climate change.

Question 27

Pollution

Answer 27

The manufacturing facilities emit harmful chemicals and pollutants into the atmosphere.

Components are often manufactured and shipped internationally (using fuel to transport them) in plastic packaging (which is not always recycled).

Question 28

Data Centres

Answer 28

It was reported that in 2015, data centres that provide cloud storage consumed about 3% of the world’s energy, which was 40% more than the whole of the UK.

Huge amounts of energy are required in data centres for operating cooling systems for server rooms. Cooling systems are using 386 million litres of cooling fluid per year.

Some companies are now building data centres in colder regions such as the Arctic Circle to reduce the need for cooling.

Question 29

Energy Waste

Answer 29

Computers make a significant contribution to energy waste. In 2009, it was reported that workers in the USA were wasting $2.8 billion every year in energy costs by not turning off their PCs at the end of the workday.

Since that report, the number of devices in use has doubled. Energy waste translates into greenhouse gases that contribute to pollution and global climate change.

Question 30

E-Waste

Answer 30

Electronic waste, destined for refurbishment, reuse, resale, recycling, or disposal.

Question 31

Positive Environmental Issues

Answer 31

The positive environmental impacts of widespread computer use include:

Homeworking reduces the need to travel, which reduces CO2 emissions
More on-screen documents mean a reduction in the use of paper and other resources
Computers enable scientific research into more environmentally friendly technologies like electric cars, solar panels etc.

Question 32

Smart Road Systems

Answer 32

Smart road systems can help reduce energy use by turning road lighting off if sensors do not detect traffic on the roads.

A new initiative is planned to provide smart vehicles on demand, which would reduce car ownership and ensure that vehicles are routed so that they are not caught in traffic jams, using fuel unnecessarily.

Question 33

Environmental Balances

Answer 33

Online shopping has become so easy that some people now use it for up to half of their needs.

However, its simplicity has meant that we increasingly use it to buy single items expecting delivery tomorrow.

Is the technology that allows this increasing the miles of polluting delivery vans, or are the routing algorithms now so efficient that home deliveries are in fact better for the environment than people using their own cars?
Should there be a minimum order quantity imposed?
Is the ease with which we can shop encouraging unnecessary purchases or fuelling unnecessary manufacturing? (Think fast fashion)

Question 34

Privacy Issues

Answer 34

Using computers raises concerns about individual rights of privacy. Ways in which individuals are monitored include:

Companies monitoring use of their computers by employees
Use of CCTV and facial recognition
Websites track a lot of information about your activities, such as location, browser, IP address, operating system, websites visited, what you have searched for, and use it to target adverts
Mobile phone companies are able to track an individual’s location from their phone, even when not in use
Call records are sorted and can be accessed by police if requested
With the wrong privacy settings, social media activity is available for anyone to see

Question 35

EU Cookie Law

Answer 35

However, because of the ‘cookie law’ (a piece of legislation that requires websites to get consent from visitors to store or retrieve any information on a computer system), you now have to register to watch catch-up TV, and have a choice in whether you accept cookies to read the news or allow search engines to analyse your browsing habits to make search results more meaningful.

Question 36

Monitoring & Surveillance

Answer 36

The balance between a person’s right to privacy and the need to keep people safe is often difficult to strike.

Closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras are used to deter people from committing crimes and to provide law enforcement with evidence of criminal activity. CCTV was first used for this in 1968 in the city of Olean, NY, in the USA.

However, your privacy is threatened by the use of CCTV. Whether it is right or wrong to threaten your privacy is an ethical issue.

Question 37

RIPA

Answer 37

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) regulates electronic surveillance and investigation by public bodies.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) was needed because of the growth in internet communications.

It lays out the limits of police and government agencies’ powers, and the responsibilities of companies such as internet service providers (ISPs), telecom companies, and social media platforms.

Question 38

Citizen CCTV

Answer 38

Citizen CCTV is a relatively new development. Doorbells and home security systems record and transmit large amounts of image and video data.

Question 39

Encryption Issues

Answer 39

Encryption is one tool that allows us to protect ourselves and our information from government surveillance.

In 2013, whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the extent to which the US government was collecting information on its own citizens, which included reading emails and listening to phone calls.

This event created the ‘Snowden effect’, a phenomenon characterised by increased uptake in secure communication systems and services like WhatsApp and Telegram.

Both of these services use end-to-end encryption, which allows users to communicate without the service itself being able to read the messages that they write.

Of course, there is another side to encryption: encryption can also be used to hide criminal activity and prevent law enforcement from being able to carry out important investigations into serious crimes.

Question 40

Legislation

Answer 40

The laws that apply within a country. Computing legislation is a set of laws that regulate the use of computers and related areas.

Question 41

Legal Issues

Answer 41

Legal issues are laws (legislation) drawn up to govern activities and control crime such as:

Unauthorised access to data and computer systems for the purpose of theft or damage
Identity theft
Software piracy
Fraud
Harassment, such as trolling

There are many legal issues that need to be considered when using computers including:

How to keep personal data safe
How to protect computers from hackers
The ability to protect digital media from being illegally copied

Question 42

GDPR

Answer 42

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in EU law creates a European standard to protect individuals, and regulates how companies and organisations may collect, hold, and use personal data.

Question 43

The Data Protection Act (2018)

Answer 43

The Data Protection Act 2018 is the UK’s implementation of the GDPR.

The DPA 2018 sets out seven key principles that should be central to processing personal data:

Lawfulness, fairness and transparency
Purpose limitation
Data minimisation
Accuracy
Storage limitation
Security
Accountability

Exemptions are granted to specific sectors including national security, scientific research, financial services and the Home Office.

Question 44

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988)

Answer 44

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988) is the UK law that gives an individual or organisation the right to control a piece of original work.

The Act applies equally to digital content, such as music and movies, as it does to content in other forms, such as a painting or piece of sheet music.

Question 45

The Dark Web

Answer 45

The dark web is part of the internet that must be accessed through specialist software.

It hosts a wide range of (mainly illegal) content.

Users can communicate and access resources anonymously and without divulging their location.

The anonymity this allows makes it harder for law enforcement agencies to monitor illegal activity via communications on forums, for example.

Question 46

Information Commissioner

Answer 46

In the UK, data protection is enforced by the Information Commissioner.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is an independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies, and data privacy for individuals.

Question 47

Sensitive Information

Answer 47

There is stronger legal protection for more sensitive information, such as:

race
ethnic background
political opinions
religious beliefs
trade union membership
genetics
biometrics (where used for identification)
health
sexual orientation

There are separate safeguards for personal data relating to criminal convictions and offences.

Question 48

Subject Access Request

Answer 48

If you want to see the data that an organisation holds on you, you need to make a written request.

If it is a public organisation, write to their data protection officer (DPO). Their details should be on the organisation’s privacy notice.

If the organisation has no DPO, or you do not know who to write to, address your letter to the company secretary.

The organisation must give you a copy of the data they hold about you as soon as possible, and within one month at most.

There are some situations when organisations are allowed to withhold information, for example if the information is about:

the prevention, detection, or investigation of a crime
national security or the armed forces
the assessment or collection of tax
judicial or ministerial appointments

An organisation does not have to say why they’re withholding information.

Question 49

Computer Misuse Act (1990)

Answer 49

This act makes it a criminal offense to:

Access
Or Modify
Or attempt the above on…

…computer material, and includes hacking and distribution of malware.

Attempts to break into a computer system are illegal, even if they are not successful, and the penalty goes up if hacking is accompanied by other offences, such as fraud or extortion.

Virus writing is illegal, even if you write the virus for another person and do not release it yourself.

Question 50

Copyright

Answer 50

The right given to the originator of a piece of work to control how it can be used.

Question 51

Copyright (Computer Programs) Regulations 1992

Answer 51

The Copyright (Computer Programs) Regulations 1992 extended the Act to cover computer programs.

Question 52

Software Licence

Answer 52

A software licence is:

a contract between the user and the developer or owner
that grants permission to use the software under given conditions.

These conditions may stipulate a time period, or further limitations such as non-commercial use only.

Software licences are used to indicate to the user how the software can be used.

Developers release software under a licence.

Software users do not own the software, but they are permitted to use it if they agree to the licence terms.

The licence may, or may not, place restrictions on the user.

Question 53

Proprietary Software

Answer 53

LICENCE

Software with a licence that places restrictions on the user regarding their right to run, study, distribute, or modify the code.

Proprietary software is written by organisations trying to make a profit.

The source code is kept securely, and versions of the software are distributed as executable programs, so that the user is not able to access the source code or modify it
The software is copyright protected, making it illegal to modify or distribute it
The software is usually licensed for a fixed number of computer systems
The software is fully tested and supported by the organisation

Question 54

Open-Source Software

Answer 54

LICENCE

Software for which the program source code is made available to the general public.

Open source software is licenced but free to use.

The source code can be viewed and edited.

Any derivatives of the work must also be made available (open) to others with the source code.

Linux, Open Office and Mozilla Firefox browser are examples.

Question 55

Freeware

Answer 55

Freeware is free, but will require a licence, commonly restricting its use and distribution, much like proprietary software.

Examples include Adobe Reader and Skype

Question 56

Creative Commons

Answer 56

A Creative Commons licence allows the owner to be attributed, or choose how others can share, use, or build on the material.