Report on the Ethical issues and ICT

The way of communicating among the people is totally changed from last twenty years of the revolution. It is totally obvious that IT has changed the ways of communicating and dealing in business and social as well as personal lives. People can now communicate through millions of ways or can send messages and can connect to almost everywhere in the world. They can order whatever they want through internet and can find many ways to do business. But emerging trends in ICT have caused many ethical issues in recent years.

Ethics are generally related to those morals and codes of the attitude that guide us in our profession. This term usually carries with principle and moral values and some moral obligations. Every profession depends on its ethics. Ethics are derived from the general expectations of the people from either professional or general public. Fishers (2004) explain the concept of ethics as personal belief of any individual about what is right and what is wrong. Moreover, Logsdon and Yuthas (1997) explained that ethics on the base are usually the expectations of the society which can be legitimate made by those constitutes through which any company or firm is interacting. But according to Hanekon (1984) the ethics is something that is related to history of humanity. It deals with conducts and moral characters of human beings. It is related to good and bad deeds, right or wrong path and behavior of the human beings. It works on evaluating some particular criterion and then work to put negative or positive sense in it. It is about how should one have to live or expected to live. According to the study of Erondu, Sharland and Okpara (2004) ethics is related to those issues that deal with practical decision making which also include ultimate values and those standards that help to judge the human actions that whether they are right or wrong good or evil. According to Adenubi (1999), ethics deals with the system of moral values and the principles. Ethics could be just a general term that deal with moral beliefs and ethical theory.

Information technology opened up a new world to everyone with also cyber space and global networking that also cause wide variety if social, political and ethical issues. Those issue are apparent that are related to human relationship and communities because most of the actions of the human are carrying out in cyber space. This report is focusing on the ethical issue generated due to the emerging development in information technology along with pros and cons for the development in information and communication technology. There are many ethical issues that become highlighted in past years because of the developing ICT. Plagiarism, copyright issues, hacking, data access rights, piracy are prominent issues in IT. Some of these ethical issues are being resolved using different software like SSL, digital IDs, Encryption techniques and computer firewalls. Even all these protection software, legal laws are required in order to address many of the countries who are involved I global networking. In order to have the future advantage, thoroughly strategies and guidelines should be made for the implementation so that the global information can be exploited in ethically sensitive way.

Plagiarism: Plagiarism is defined as the action od copying someone else work and representing it as your own work. This is condemned to be highly unethical action but still its keep on going frequently and because of information technology which give all of the information available on internet easily so this unethical practice is happening more often now. In the education sector especially in commerce and industries, internet has its profound influence. Many of the effects of information technology is quite disturbing to everyone. Now in the classrooms there are more than ever computers present that is helping students to learn, write and read digitally while also having access to the variety of digital information and because of this many of the students see libraries to be used as computer terminals rather than books. Students now prefer to read their research paper online rather than searching in books and library stacks. Internet is the one who brought plagiarism in computer era in 2 senses. Electronic media has made it easy for the students to cut and paste and publish for example articles form the encyclopedia. 2^nd is student can always find someone on internet who can write their paper because it is so easy now to find and search paper anonymously from the websites. It can be said that what internet gives can also take away. Teachers also have access now to compare the work of the student to the resources of the internet in the database on the electronically submitted papers. Even on search that is done online can find that where this phrase has been originally taken.

Security: Hackers have now easy access to hack any system or the computer due to the development in information technology as long as computer or the system is connected to the internet. Hackers can have easy access to IP or internet protocol in order to hack the user computer and then they can collect the data for their criminal actions. There is a wide range of internet cookies that can have access to hack information whenever we have access to the internet. This scheme has exposed man of the IT expert and users to their high risk of fraud and conducing any crime. Many of the industries use these cookies in order to guess that which advertisement or product they can advertise us. The transfer of money can easily get hack or interrupted when it comes to online banking phenomenon, all the money can get transferred and steal to another account. This can have influence on both bank as well as the customer of that bank who was using online technology of banking.

Copyright infringement: It is all because of information technology that there is easy access for the user to have any information at any time on internet. Music sharing networking has developed because of this and photo bookmarking the site. That is why the original creators of those contents are losing their value and credibility of their work. Because IT can have ways access to them and they share data with others. The downloading sites are popping up internet every day. Many of the work related to books or music can easily downloaded from internet for free. Any user ca simply purchases such stuff from many software or web template and then can upload it to some other site where anyone can download for free. It is good because it can save money but indirectly it harms the original content creator. Government has worked to closed some of the sites like these but still many are popping up using some funny URLs.

Advantages and disadvantages of ICT 

Advantages: As said by McLuhan in 1964 that

“The new electronic independence re-creates the world in the image of a global village.”

He gave this quote in 1964 which have came true in this decade. There are a lot of advantages for using the information technology;

·         Communication: Now it is more easy and quicker to send or share any information around the globe, which help in saving money and time. Communication has become much easier because of development in information technology. It is all because of ICT that the ways of communicating are expanding day by day. Many of the social networking sites and social media for example WhatsApp, Facebook, skype has made plenty of ways to connect the world. Messages can be sent to anyone at any time around the globe CT development has brought families together and has changed lives a lot across the world.

·         Cost effectiveness: In business flights and accommodations, ICT has saved a lot of pressure and amount of money. Many offers from the companies of telecommunications and mobile phones has made a new chapter more than the past. Few years back there was no way to send messages form the phone but people now use social networking for free like Viber, skype and Facebook etc. people can do shopping from home as it saves time and money

·         Greater availability: All websites and social sites are available to communicate at any time of the year. This makes greater availability for the businesses which can get open at any time and can facilitate the customers and make them capable to make purchases form many sites online in various countries around the globe.

·         Bridging the cultural gap: ICT has helped in maintaining the bridges between many cultures by allowing them a platform to share their information and values with one another. It educates both sides of the community and thus make a bridge between them by increasing the awareness and decreasing the prejudice.

·         Creation of jobs: New and interesting jobs in sector of I is creating every day, which is an advantage of ICT. Web designing and computer programming are one of the emerging fields in this area which have much scope and greater employment opportunities are created through the advancement in information technology 

Disadvantages: Lack of privacy and security:

Advancement in information technology has brought along issues related to security and privacy of the user. Email hacking and interruption in phone signals are making people worries that their personal information will may become public through different hackers. Information technology is keeping on changing everyday which mean that everyone should keep updates I this field in order to secure their information and jobs. There is a lot of risk factor in system viruses and malware, spam and trojans etc.

·         Unemployment: It made job redundancies and subcontracting and is streamlined in the business environment. People prefer to use computer instead of human being in order to save labor work and time. In this way employee are losing their jobs on larger scale as they are not needed anymore.

·         Social media: Many of the social sites and network pages are open to everyone including young teenagers which can affect their health mentally and physically by playing many violent games that also made them addicted to play them over and over again. They become attached to their phone, iPod, consoles and they forget about the life outside and their society where actual human being lives apart from the gaming world.

·         Cyber bullying: Bullying and threatening others on social media have became very easy these days through the internet and advancement in ICT. People do not realize the results it will bring when they are doing harmful activities and comments on internet. There were many cases related to cyber bullying in past years with many legal consequences. Children always have the risk to get involve in cyber bullying. Sometime people see nice on internet but deep down they are planning to use internet for harassment or to intimidate others. Attack could be in any form like name calling or maybe physical threat that parents sometimes do not even see. Parents and the caretaker are always responsible for protecting their children from all these online threats and cyber bullying. They can supervise their access to cyber space, they can teach their children for their personal safety. There is another option to install parent control software. Even schools, internet service providers, media industry and other regulatory bodies are responsible in order to ensure that children properly know about the benefits and risks of cyber space and they should couch them with skills so that they can protect themselves.

·         Risks of internet on children: Internet made children lazy in spite of making them smarter than before. Internet do give knowledge but kids are busier in playing video games there. If the internet is giving opportunity to get knowledge from it. It doesn’t mean that people are using it too. It is true that internet give a chance to student to learn different subjects and have access to different topics easily and free but it is not always true that they will use it. Internet give basic information and not the whole information which a child can only have through studying in school. Internet play no role in making a child active.

Children now a days are more dependent on use of internet. Smart children are those who can face challenges in different conditions with different strategies but internet just give the information and internet is doing contrary because it gave children easy ways to solve their issues instead facing them in real and with a proper strategy. When children become dependent on internet their mind become slow and dead eventually. Internet gave so many distractions and time get wasted a lot in this way.

·         Reliance on technology: People now a days do not bother to read from book or calculate or wrote anything in this way tey are losing their ability to write, calculating without a calculator even for the minor additions, or reading books for the sake of getting mind fresh and getting information.

Conclusion: Information technology opened up a new world to everyone with also cyber space and global networking that also cause wide variety of social, political and ethical issues. Those issue are apparent that are related to human relationship and communities because most of the actions of the human are carrying out in cyber space. By the use of technological approaches many of the ethical issues that are related to ICT has been resolved. Some of these ethical issues are being resolved using different software like SSL, digital IDs, Encryption techniques and computer firewalls. Even all these protection software, legal laws are required in order to address many of the countries who are involved I global networking. In order to have the future advantage, thoroughly strategies and guidelines should be made for the implementation so that the global information can be exploited in ethically sensitive way. People must take caution for sharing information.

REFERENCES of Ethical issues and ICT

Gorniak-Kocikowska, K. (1996) The computer revolution and the problem of global ethics. Science and Engineering Ethics, Vol2 No 2 pp177-190.

Gotterbarn, D., Miller, K. and Rogerson, S., (1999) “Software Engineering Code of Ethics is Approved”, Communications of the ACM, October Vol 42 No 10, 1999, pp 102-107.

Gotterbarn, D. (1991). “Computer Ethics: Responsibility Regained”. National Forum: The Phi Beta Kappa Journal, Vol 71, pp. 26-31.

Maner, W. (1980). Starter Kit in Computer Ethics. Helvetia Press (published in cooperation with the National Information and Resource Center for Teaching Philosophy). [Originally self-published by Maner in 1978.]

http://cyberbullying.org/

Mc Luhan, M. 1964, “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man” Published by McGraw-Hill.

http://www.garda.ie/

http://bookboon.com

Spinello R.A. (1995), Ethical aspects of information technology, Prentice-Hall, New York.