Current mood: exhausted
Current tunes: Russell Allen and Jorn Lande - The Battle
Ethics are an important aspect of all professions including computer science. Because we work with machines so much, we may forget that our interactions with these machines can have a profound effect on millions of lives. Obviously, if one was to create a program that, after a certain amount of time, had a feature that caused harm to the machine it was on, the program would be unethical. However, this is an extreme example. Some programs and services created by computer scientists have not-so-explicit consequences. For example, social networking sites can have adverse effects on some of their users. They may become addicted or post information that harms others. Is it the programmer's fault for not preventing this harmful use? Clearly it is not since programmers cannot control human behavior. Creating a program which has a non-harmful purpose but can be misused to hurt others is vastly different than creating a program with the sole purpose is to cause damage.
The act of powering a computer causes damage to it. Running a program on that computer puts it under stress. Any program run on a computer causes harm to the computer. We are all horrible people.
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