1.6 – Ethical, legal, cultural and environmental impacts of digital technology

This unit looks at the impact of digital technology on our lives from different perspectives.

Digital technology can mean computing devices that you use such as a laptop, mobile phone or smart watch - but it can also be larger systems such as CCTV, online databases, social media and even pandemic virus tracking applications.

In the last few decades, computer science has massively changed every aspect of our society. Jobs have been lost in many industries, and in some cases have been made completely obsolete. There are also many new industries that did not exist before computers, and the situation is changing and evolving all the time.

When we look at the impact of computers and computing technology, there are certain areas that we should consider:

Ethical issues are about what would be considered right and wrong by society.

Legal issues are about what is actually right and wrong in the eyes of the law

Cultural issues are about how groups of people with particular beliefs, practices or languages may be affected e.g ethnic groups, religions, countries.

Environmental issues are about how we impact on the natural world:

• The impacts of Computer Science on the Environment are both positive and negative

• Computers have helped in manufacturing, engineering, surgery, medicine etc.

• However, generally technology requires electricity to function

• Often judgements need to be made as to whether this is a good balance

• Also, what happens to old computers/robots etc?

Privacy issues concern how our personal information is kept safe, and how we have a right to privacy.

Stakeholders

A stakeholder is a person who may be involved either directly, or indirectly with an issue or problem. Most issues and problems will have many stakeholders, some may be obvious, some may be less obvious.

Questions about ethical, legal, cultural, environmental and privacy issues often carry high mark allocations. To gain the higher band of marks you should be able to identify more than just the ‘obvious’

Ethical issues are about what would be considered right and wrong by society. If a computer system enables the users to do things that most people disagree with but are not necessarily breaking any laws, then that may mean that the practice is unethical.

Ensuring public safety

Ensuring public safety is paramount. As new technologies are introduced, they bring safety concerns.

For example, driverless cars may soon be on the roads in the UK. The designers of driverless cars have not only had to ensure the safety of passengers, but also of other drivers and pedestrians. Ethics apply here as a situation may occur where the car's software has to decide who has safety priority, the passengers or other road users.

Data security

Personal data is precious and needs to be kept safe. Unfortunately, there are people that attempt to hack systems in order to gain access to other people's data. Social media accounts, phone mailboxes and networks that computers connect to are all prone to hacking.

Some people may also use malware to obtain data. Recent times have seen the increased use of a type of malware known as ransomware. People who write ransomware do it to extort money from unsuspecting users. Once the ransomware infects a computer it encrypts data on it, denying users access unless a ransom is paid.