Beneficial and Harmful Effects of Computing

Benefit/Harm 1

  • Benefit: Easy access to information, very easy to find research on topics which you are interested in
  • Harm: Lots of misinformation and conflicting information, making it hard to know whats actually true

Benefit/Harm 2

  • Benefit: Easy to discuss topics with people who have similar views as you
  • Harm: Political discussions on the internet can lead to extremism and radicalization, as people get stuck in echo chambers where their opinions are reinforced gradually more extreme.

Benefit/Harm 3

  • Benefit: Internet provides easy entertainment option to pass time and communicate with others
  • Harm: Very addictive, and people may end up being more focused on the internet then in the real world.

Dopamine Issues

As far as dopamine issues go, I think part of it is real but it is being exaggerated by parents. I think a lot of it depends on the person. Some people may be spending too much time on the internet to the point where it is unhealthy and they aren’t getting any stimulation from anywhere else. However, I feel like the majority of people, while they may still have some dependence and addiction from the internet, still understand the importance of real life social experiences.

Beneficial Effect of My Project

  1. Can help people find the right car to use
  2. Can help myself understand better how websites work
  3. Can help understand the necessary components of an effective website for a business

Harmful Effect of My Project

  1. Giving full freedom with reservation service can allow people to mess with it and misuse it as they can write whatever they want and it will show up.

Pros/Cons of Internet Blockers at School

  • Pros:
    • Reduces distractions for kids at school
    • Blocks out material which may not be appropriate for school
  • Cons:
    • Sometimes blocks out websites which are necessary for class (AWS)
    • Kids can pretty easily find ways around blockers if they are motivated

Digital Divide

As far as concerns go, I think a big one is that it furthermore increases the cost of living and basic necessities. Now, in order to be a successful, you need to be able to afford a phone and computer to have any sort of outreach. This makes it even harder for poor people to catch up as they now need to think about several things and may be at a disadvantage if their phones are older and of less quality.

5.3 Hacks

I think people don’t always realize the control these sites have over groups of people. They can choose to push certain information and ideas over people. I think people should start to realize when they go down certain rabbit holes and take the information they are presented with a grain of salt as it may start to get more and more biased. We should also take other peoples opinions in mind when developing programs so that we can write them in a way that works for a lot of people, not just me.

5.4 Hacks

  • A crowdsourcing idea for the compsci department would include a website which talks about how to succeed in computer science which a group of students have access to work on.
  • During finals week, we could capture data regarding best study methods and what kids like to do to prepare for their finals

5.5 Hacks

Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal

Effectively waives all copyright and allows anyone to use your work how you want

Open Source MIT License

Allows people to do what they want, but they have to credit the author

Open Source GPL License

Cannot distribute closed source versions

  1. I think these copyright laws are important, because people should be able to have a say in how their work is to be used. If these laws are not put into place, people may not earn the credit that their work is worth.

  2. For my fastpages, I chose the Creative Commons Zero license as I did not care how people used the information on there. Fastpages License

    • For the project frontend, I chose the MIT License since the work on their was more valuable and was an actual project we did so people should give us credit Project License
    • For the project backend, I want to use the MIT License as well as that is part of the project we feel we deserve credit for.

5.6 Hacks

  1. Some of our projects, like our fastpages, has some information about us which is accessible to the public. Our github accounts are also examples of PII similar to social media where people can see the types of projects we have worked on as well as the code we have written.
  2. I don’t really have strong feelings on it, but it is something we should all keep in mind, as we should think before posting things on social media as it will add to our public image. We should remember that things like colleges and employers may look at it to see if this is the type of person they want in their space, so we should not post anything to make them believe the opposite.
  3. Good passwords are generally long and use different types of characters, like capital letters, numbers, symbols, etc. Someone would not be able to guess the password. A bad password would be something like your birthday, for example, as someone could easily find that out and guess that as your password. Also using the same password for everything could be dangerous, as if it is found for one thing, somebody all of a sudden has access to all of your important personal information.
  4. Symmetric encryption is more efficient and easier, while asymmetric encryption is more secure, but also uses more resources.
  5. We used Certbot encryption in AWS deployment
  6. I have gotten text messages saying things like I need to fix something in my Netflix account. I have never fallen for these, but I could totally see someone who is not as familiar with the internet falling for these type of things.