Category Archives: Technology and society

This is the category for societal issues where technology is playing a big role.

Samsung Sues Korean Newspaper Over False Claims

Samsung, the Android phone giant, is suing Korean newspaper ETNews for falsely publishing incorrect information related to the upcoming Galaxy S5 smartphone.  According to the news article, Samsung was apparently having trouble with the manufacture of cameras for the S5.  This would mean a push back on the April 11 launch date for the phone (a big prompt for investors to get angry).  This prompted a response from Samsung for the news corporation to retract the statement, which it refused.

Samsung is now suing for $284,000 USD (or 300 million KRW) from the newspaper.  Of course, as pointed out by BGR, we don’t know a lot of details since the site’s translation is horrible.  It released a statement to internet news site TechCrunch to clarify it’s actions related to this case:

“Samsung Electronics sought a correction from ET News following the publication of false claims that can hugely damage our business and brand value. In the interests of providing consumers with accurate information, we made a number of requests for the information to be corrected. Unfortunately this was ignored and we are now taking legal action as a last resort.”

While Samsung’s position on this is understandable, especially on the heels of investor outrage over the low sales figures of the Galaxy S4.  Apple Insider has pointed out that similar happenings have gone on at the launch of every major Apple phone and the company has yet to sue any news outlet for incorrect information.

Is the “Internet of Things” making us more vulnerable to hacking?

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a general concept that refers to objects that have identifiable or machine-readable information, which can be managed by computers. The long-term goal is for every device and person to be equipped with identifiers that are all linked together.

The idea seems fascinating and innovative, but it raises a lot of issues, particularly issues related to security. For instance, last month we learned that the largest hacking scheme of Target’s financial system was done through a HVAC system. As things we use for everyday living begin to have online capabilities, our lives and the Internet of Things become increasingly interconnected. As we see now with the increased commercial use of things like NEST technology’s thermostat, we can control every system in our home without even leaving our seats. That sort of convenience helps its users but leaves the door wide open for those who have ill intentions.  IoT gives others the ability to hack in and control certain aspects of our lives, by unlocking our door, turning our lights on, or disabling security systems. They even have the ability to hack into our appliances. The biggest concern of all this is that your personal data can be compiled from IoT devices. IoT’s data includes information about its user’s location, how many people are in the home, when one arrives or leaves their home.

The IoT is an economically expanding system. With over 20 billion devices set to be “internized” by 2020, it creates a breeding ground for data collectors. Even software that allows users to counter security threats is still susceptible to hacking.

All we can hope for is that with the increase of “IoT”, there is an increase in security detail.  But even then nothing is guaranteed.  What do you think about “IoT”, and the concerns it raises? Would you want every device you own to be connected? How would we go about making sure our privacy, data, etc. are protected?

Self Driving Cars

This is a topic that has been fairly prevalent on automotive news and I thought I would bring it up. Nowadays, automation is becoming more of a reality in our lives. We no longer have to put in our own labor in our everyday tasks, a lot of the time; we simply click a button and a computer takes full control. This brings me onto Google, who have been in the process of innovating an “Autonomous Vehicle” , among several other major car companies. This in itself raises some interesting ethical questions. For instance, how comfortable would you be with potentially leaving your lives in the hand of a computer driven vehicle? Obviously, the concept is still in its very early stages of testing and won’t surface on the market for a considerable amount of time but the idea still might trouble a lot of people.

There have been arguments that autonomous vehicles will result in drastic reductions in traffic accidents as it will completely eradicate driver error. However, to what extent could an automaker argue that their vehicles are that safe, and when an accident does inevitably occur, who is to blame? In terms of moral rights theory, a person has a basic right to life, which implies that ‘people’ have a duty to not harm them or take their life. Could we impose this duty on a computer and how would we enforce it? If it is somehow possible to hack the integrated systems on these vehicles, that could be a means for a disaster. Most of these cars are expected to communicate with one another wirelessly in order to make travel as efficient as possible and if this communication were to be affected, serious consequences could result. Would you say that autonomous vehicles are the right direction for the future of transit?

The War of the Androids

Google vs. Samsung

Samsung owns the vast majority of the market share for Android, 29.6% in fact.  That may not seem like a big number, but it dominates the competitors: in Q4 2013 alone Samsung shipped 86 million phones.  That’s on top of a platform that already owns the vast majority of smartphone OS market share at a good 81%.  This puts Samsung in a very good position to dictate what the current state of Android is….and it’s very far removed from creator Google’s vision.

It starts with Touchwiz as pointed out in a recent Forbes article.  A Samsung technology to provide a new user experience and frontend to Android that replaces or adds many different features to the Android smartphone.  Some good, some bad….while many critics argue that Touchwiz is a terrible and bloated interface, you can’t argue with sales numbers and hardware.  This extended to other Samsung products including it’s popular television sets and a new OS in development at Samsung to replace Android: Tizen.  But that hides the core of the “Android experience” as it’s been dubbed in the media.  And Google wants Samsung to sit down, shut-up and keep licensing Google technology.

This is where Motorola came into play.

Acquiring Motorola for 12.5 billion dollars and then selling it for 2.91 billion on the surface seems like a bad business decision.  And surely enough there were many pundits that made that call.  But what the majority are forgetting are the numerous patents acquired from the sale for mobile technology (around 17,000 to be precise).  This sale occurred in 2011.  A few years later, Google decided to use Motorola to teach Samsung a lesson.

Enter the Motorola Droid RAZR, X and G.  Three popular phones that run almost bare stock Android.  The purpose of these phones were simple, show users what fast, simple Android could do on it’s own.  Google also began focusing more effort on the Nexus line, dropping Samsung as the manufacturer and taking on LG to release the Nexus 4.

Clearly the growing popularity of these phones and the market share of Motorola under Google was threatening to Samsung.  So they decided to cut a deal in which they would license Google technology for 10 years.  Effectively cutting off Tizen and with promises that Samsung would stop cutting out stock Android apps for it’s own Touchwiz interface.

The next day, Lenovo bought Motorola from Google for 2.91 billion dollars.

Open source, opportunity, and women in software

Linux Journal recently ran a thoughtful essay by Susan Sons about females in open source and hacking communities.

Sons starts by talking about how she first engaged with the Linux community. It was the 1990’s, and Sons was around age 12. She applauds that community for including anyone who was interested and skillful — even a 12 year old girl living on a farm.

Sons goes on to talk about how her way of learning technology is very different than the way girls are typically introduced to tech nowadays, like in high school STEM courses. She seems to feel like she was introduced to technology in a healthy way. But she thinks that, unfortunately, most girls are not given the opportunity to learn about computers the way she did.

Twelve-year-old girls today don’t generally get to have the experiences that I did. Parents are warned to keep kids off the computer lest they get lured away by child molesters or worse—become fat! That goes doubly for girls, who then grow up to be liberal arts majors. Then, in their late teens or early twenties, someone who feels the gender skew in technology communities is a problem drags them to a LUG meeting or an IRC channel. Shockingly, this doesn’t turn the young women into hackers.

Her main point seems to be that, as she learned technology (on a computer at home, communicating over IRC), it did not matter whether she was male or female, and it didn’t matter how old she was. But the way we introduce most girls to technology now is much less healthy. We expect them to live up to certain gender roles — wearing make-up, dressing stylishly, projecting femininity — and emphasize those things instead of encouraging them to hack and create. Then, when girls who have never had the opportunity to learn about computers get to high school, we act like there must be something wrong with them and act like they need special help (like special classes for women in STEM).

Sons also explains how these differences in learning technology result in differences in the ways women and men are treated later as adults in technology and computer occupations. Sons also seems to think that the situation has become a lot worse over the last 20 years.

I’ve never had a problem with old-school hackers. These guys treat me like one of them, rather than “the woman in the group”, and many are old enough to remember when they worked on teams that were about one third women, and no one thought that strange. Of course, the key word here is “old” (sorry guys). Most of the programmers I like are closer to my father’s age than mine.

The new breed of open-source programmer isn’t like the old. They’ve changed the rules in ways that have put a spotlight on my sex for the first time in my 18 years in this community.

Maybe Sons’ underlying message is this: We treat girls and women unfairly when it comes to computers and technology. But the main problem is not individual cases of prejudice. It is an educational system and a technology culture that puts women at a disadvantage from an early age — primarily by having very different expectations for women and men. Is that right? If so, then it is clearly very unfair.

Sons has an interesting perspective, and I wonder if it matches what you have seen in the tech world — in school, in online communities, in the workplace.

Google Glass App to help see taxpayer waste everywhere they look

Developers have come up with an app for Google Glass, called Augmented Advocacy, that would display government wasteful spending in your field of vision, using Google’s head-mounted computer.  Just stand next to a government building, and it will display information in the form of a Glass information card directly in your field of vision.  The app knows where you are, but currently it works only in Washington DC.

This idea, on the surface, looks like a good idea.  It gives the public an easy, quick view of how wasteful the government is with taxpayer’s money, although the information strictly comes from conservatives.  This app would appeal to the Republican, but Democrats may not be very interested in this app.  If it is successful, we may see a similar app come out that may have information submitted by left-wingers.

What’s not clear is how far this app will go.  Will it display information for the public sector only in the future, or will it expand into the private sector as well?  Will it be possible for the common Joe to upload information about, say, the price of houses in a neighborhood?  What would it be like to have friends/coworkers/etc. know how much your house is just by using Glass.  Sure, you can get this information online, but this information could be so much easier to access in the near future.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is a topic that, since the beginnings of computers, has come up time and time again. People seem to be fascinated at the idea that machines could perform tasks just as well or better than humans.

This year in particular has been particularly interesting already for artificial intelligence. Google just payed £400million for an AI research company, IBM is pouring $1billion into it’s newly branded Watson division, a movie about a man falling in love with an AI meets success, and Eric Schmidt warns that the Jobs problem will be ‘the defining one’. Why so much buzz about AI? In my opinion, I think it’s because artificial intelligence suddenly seems real to us as a people. We live in a world where computers beat humans at everything from chess to Jeapordy, a game that is uniquely human in so many ways.

Ethically, artificial intelligence is very interesting. In a world where tasks normally reserved for full time employees can be automated, it creates questions of morality. For instance, is it ethical to replace somebody with a machine? What if that machine could perform this task more accurately and safely. However, without that task to perform a worker may have trouble finding employment. Without employment, the worker contributes to a global trend of growing economic inequality.

AI is interesting stuff. Looking forward to comments.

-chris

TPP and What Could Come From It

TPP stands for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is a trade agreement between Australia, Brunei, Chile, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States. Many people draw similar to this international trade agreement to the controversial NAFTA agreement. NAFTA was known to provide little benefit to signatories Mexico and Canada, but assisted major US corporations greatly. Much of the negotiation behind TPP has been dealt in secrecy, from even the majority of Congress, and have been conducted by the White House and lobbyists. Sen. Wyden, who is the chairman of the International Trade subcommittee, stated, “The majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of U.S. corporations – like Halliburton, Chevron, PHRMA, Comcast, and the Motion Picture Association of America – are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement.” A good portion of the public was kept in the dark about these negotiations until portions of the treaty’s draft have been leaked through Wikileaks, in November of 2013. TPP is major agreement with many different provisions, however, what is subjectively most concerning is how it would affect ISPs, intellectual property, and all Internet users.

The major points of concern behind TPP:

-The TPP will alter existing US intellectual property laws.

-Copyright holders now have control over temporary copies, holding ISPs responsible for cached versions of files, despite the difficulty in controlling those.

-Copyright holders do not have to prove irreparable harm in court.

-Using software to bypass a software lock, even for what is currently legal use, could now be criminalized

-TPP’s intellectual property laws are also of concern in the medical field, particularly those developing pharmaceuticals and medical technology.

-Signatories of these treaties will have intellectual property laws similar, and consequently just as strict, to the US’s legal code

This is just a brief summary of what could stem from TPP, however, I am interested in hearing your opinions on the subject. If there is any information I got wrong or missed, please feel free to contribute that as well.

ACLU: https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech-technology-and-liberty-national-security/biggest-threat-free-speech-and

Russia Today: http://rt.com/usa/wikileaks-tpp-ip-dotcom-670/

Wikileaks TPP: http://wikileaks.org/tpp/

Electronic Frontier Foundation: https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp

Here is an infographic I found, however I cannot vouch for its accuracy.

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Race with the machines

This post is ties really closely with the Software is eating the world post. In this TED talk, Erik Brynholfsson addresses the problem how as machines take on more jobs more and more people find themselves out of work. “Is this the end of growth? No, says Erik Brynholfsson — it’s simply the growing pains of a radically reorganized economy.” The description of the talk also suggests to watch the opposing viewpoint from Robert Gordon. (I watched his video too, but it doesn’t relate as much to our class).

Anyway, Erik argues that indeed at this moment people are losing their jobs, but this is just a growing pain for what he calls “The New Machine Age”. According to Erik at this moment in time productivity is at an all time high, and actually the numbers used to make this hypothesis are understated. He says that because a lot of the Internet is “free” economists miss about 300 billion dollars for the total GDP. Interestingly enough he will go on to incorporate a lot of the ideas that we have discussed throughout this course. He says that this new machine age will promote grow for three reasons. It’s digital, meaning it’s at virtually no cost. It’s exponential, like what Ray Kurzwiel says, and it’s combinatorial, meaning that new things will be building blocks for future implementation. His final point provides the most hope for our job situation. He states as an example that when Deep Blue played grandmaster Garry Kasparov, the machine won. And even today, a cell-phone app can beat even the most skilled grandmaster, but what is most hopeful is that today, the world champion is not a human or a machine. Today when humans work with machines, they can beat any human or any machine. This means that we need to race with the machines rather than race against the machines.

He also talks about Watson during the talk which can relate to the singularity.

And finally here is another TED talk that is unrelated to the first one, but I’ve been meaning to post it for some time. It describes the purpose of this class, and what we as developers should be doing, when making new software.

More discussion of e-waste

We really spent only one class session discussing e-waste, but I think it is a really important topic. The starting point of our discussion was “The Electronic Wasteland”, which originally aired on CBS’s 60 Minutes. It is a startling video. I think it is something we should be sharing with our friends and families

When I have had old computers to recycle, I have taken them to either FreeGeek Columbus (which seems to be defunct) or Ohio Drop Off. I assume my old electronics were reused or recycled responsibly, but I have no way of knowing for sure. And even if there are good places that recycle electronics responsibly, there will be others that don’t. It is much cheaper to recycle electronics in developing countries that have little health and environmental regulation or enforcement than it is to do the recycling around here. As long as that is true, there will be businesses that send electronics to the “wasteland” in order to save money — even if it means making people sick and polluting the land.

In class, we mentioned a few possible solutions to the e-waste problem. One idea was to design electronics with more replaceable and upgradable parts. That way things do not become obsolete as quickly, and there is less total e-waste. Another idea was to add to the cost of electronics a fee that would be refunded only if the item was returned to an authorized center for recycling. (This is similar to how some states handle recycling of bottles and cans.)

What are some other solutions? What are the pros and cons of each solution?

I Do Not Like Richard Stallman

I attended Richard Stallman’s guest lecture the other night, and I can honestly say that I definitely do not care for him as a person and I think his movement is far too radical, to the point that I think it can be considered an extremest movement.

I think what Richard Stallman is shooting for is a worthwhile goal, but his way of trying to get there is ridiculous. He cannot truly expect that I am going to quit using cellphones and delete my Facebook because they may invade my privacy a little and can be used to track me. In fact, I promote that. I hope they can use these technologies to track down the coward who blew up the finish line at the Boston Marathon. Without these technologies, it is possible that this shithead may get away with it. Once again, I promote free software, but I do not promote Richard Stallman’s way of getting there.

I also felt that everytime someone asked him a question or exclaimed a criticism he took it as an attack on his movement and in turn, behaved like an asshole. I think he had a very condescending tone toward all of us and behaved very unprofessionally. It’s like he felt so highly of himself and we were all just a bunch of idiots who needed to see that his way of doing things is the only way of doing things; in his eyes we have to change completely and he/his movement are perfect and there is no room for improvement.  In a way, I see him as a bit of a hypocrite. In the same way that Apple ropes in their users, Richard Stallman is trying to rope us into his. If we don’t see things his way we are “unethical” or “evil.” I think he bullies people into his movement with name-calling like that.

Also, here is a video of Stallman eating something off of his foot. It’s gross/funny, but when regular people see this I think it definitely turns them off to his movement and furthers the notion that he is a wacko. Free Software deserves a more professional and appealing leader  —

Skip to 1:52 for the foot-crud feast

^^If you are a Stallmanite I cannot recommend that you watch this video as it was recorded and released in a non-free format. For the rest of you, enjoy the show.

The IRS Has Upgraded to Track Your Online Activity.

Recently, the IRS has been quietly upgrading its technology so tax collectors can virtually track everything people do online. The original article points out how intrusive the new measures really are. The IRS is collecting personal information on taxpayer’s digital activities from Facebook posts  to credit card transactions. The basis for this massive data collection is to close the gap in revenue losses due to evasions and errors. Given the reduction of IRS staff because of budget cuts, and about $300 billion a year in revenue losses, it is understandable that the IRS would utilize technology to do its job more efficiently.

The IRS has already used data gathered from Facebook and eBay postings to defend tax challenges. As of now third-party data has been used only if a person’s tax returns appear irregular and merit more attention. If someone breaks the law (i.e. evading taxes) it is clear they give up their right to privacy. However, if the IRS already has a method of punishing tax evaders then why is there a need to implement data collection on a  petabyte scale?

Yes, for those who do not know: an entire year of tax returns amounts to 15 terabytes which is about 1.5% of the 1.2 petabytes (and growing) of storage capacity the IRS currently has.

This is where things get a little tricky when it comes to privacy because “by screening existing data for thousands of unique attributes, the agency can quietly create a DNA-like code to understand the economic behavior of any individual.” The IRS claims this is for data collection purposes only and has not yet decided how to implement this technology. Do you think the government has the right to monitor your online activity while essentially formulating an economic profile of you based on your behavior?

Is it just the government adapting to the times in order to keep people honest or is it another way the government is trying to keep Americans under a microscope?

Printer Unique Identification Technology

According to this article the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been aware of and alerting the public to unique printer identification or “printer dots” since about 2004. It goes on to state that the companies who have implemented this have done so of free will and in collusion with the United States government. The EFF has kindly provided a list of printers that have been tested for “anomalous yellow dots” that indicate unique identification. This article explains what the results mean and how they were obtained as to expose their methodology to as much scrutiny as possible. According to this document obtained by the EFF through a Freedom of Information Act request Canon, Brother, Casio, Hewlett-Packard, Konica, Minolta, Mita, Ricoh, Sharp, and Xerox are complicit in these acts.

The implementation of a tracking device, especially without informing the citizen/consumer of its existence, is very troubling because it directly violates the right to anonymous, free speech, a pillar of our cultural identity. A more troubling idea is that not only can the government read and interrupt this data, but so can anybody with the knowledge to do so which includes _AT LEAST_ the a handful of people in each of the above mentioned companies. This also opens the door for a person or persons to forge a paper from another persons printer and use it against them while being much harder to detect or disprove.

Interestingly enough act utilitarianism could plausibly used to justify this, especially since most people are ignorant of this fact, but the more applicable idea of moral rights theory is in a strange stalemate depending on who is asked. Founding father Ben Franklin stated “[s]ell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power,” or more colloquially, “[h]e who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.”

Are the freedoms sacrificed worth the security gained?

Globalization and Technology

I came across this article on BBC business news section and surprisingly, it is related to our reading for Monday;  the article talks about the next phase of technology and globalization. Speaking from experience as a foreigner, technology has changed the way the world communicate, i can Skype, Facebook chat with my cousins in the most remote village in The Gambia. The article divided the effects of technology and globalization into three sections.

Most businesses operate on a rationality concept- getting more done and spending less. According to the article, except for the jobs that require complex knowledge and expertise, many middle skilled jobs will be at risk of been outsourced. I am not okay with this part of technology and globalization because not every person can become an engineer, a lawyer or a doctors; if semi-skilled jobs are outsourced, it may become hard for people who do not have complex expertise to find decent jobs.

Another highlight the article talked about is external competition. One of the  crucial reason people the outside world are lured to the West is access to better education. With Educational platforms like MIT’s OpenCourseWare, Open Yale, and iTunes U, high quality education can be acquired by students living in some remote parts of the world. I think this is a good move, because it will minimize immigration and open the world to people who may not have to chance to travel to the West.

The article finally talked about emergence of Transnationals. To summarize the last part of the article  it simple said that technology will continue to re-balance the world by creating leaders form different parts of the world. what i understand from this is that in the near future, ones look  may not judge his origin and the American for example will have a prefix, say a Chinese American.

In most aspects, I am in support of the rising trend of technology and globalization,  because i think it will help bring light the many different cultures and people of the world on some kind of similar platform, what do you think?

Violating Terms of Service could be criminal

The Department of Justice has in the past taken the stance that violating the terms of service of a website is a criminal act, such as in the cases US v. Drew and US v. Nosal. With this, many underage people would be violating the law when on the internet, even when they are on news websites. Due to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection and for other reasons, many news sites have it in their terms of service that one has to be 18 or over to view their articles. While this has not yet become legal precedent, there’s a proposal in the House Judiciary Committee to make this a modification to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Many consider the law as it is too broad and vague, as it allows selective persecution, such as with Aaron Swartz. With the suggested changes, this would make the law extremely prone to abuse, as it applies to such a broad part of the population. I think that this proposal speaks a lot about the disparity between legal policy and technology, and that it goes against the Kantian view of individuals as autonomous moral agents. People should be able to decide for themselves if they want to view the content of a website, though there should exist a method that allows them to know what they might be viewing beforehand, which I think that the terms of service currently exist to fulfill.