5.1 Beneficial and harmful effects
Beneficial and Harmful Effects of Technological Innovations
-
People are the driving force behind creating computing innovations.
-
Innovations are crafted with specific goals in mind. But they can have unforeseen consequences, both positive and negative.
-
A creator cant predict all the things that can be done with their innovation as there are so many things that could be done and as technology evolves, new uses are made
Dopamine
Postives
-
Social Connection: Social media platforms allow people to connect with friends and family, especially those who may be geographically distant. It facilitates communication, sharing of experiences, and staying updated on each other’s lives.
-
Learning Opportunities: Many video games are designed to be educational and can enhance cognitive skills such as problem-solving, strategic thinking, and hand-eye coordination. Some games even incorporate historical or scientific elements, providing players with additional knowledge.
-
Creativity: Video games often stimulate creativity and imagination. Games with open-world exploration or creative building elements encourage players to think outside the box and express themselves in unique ways.
-
Community Building: Both video games and social media can foster a sense of community. Gamers often form online communities where they share tips, strategies, and experiences. Social media also allows people with common interests to connect and form communities.
Negatives
- Anthony Rosner story.
- Played up to 18 hours every single day and became extremely succesfull in world of warcraft but suffered in every other aspect of his life: school and relationships
- Eventually quit gaming, became a succesful DJ, and created a documentary.
Example Beneficial and Corresponding Harmful Effects of Computing
Tik Tok
- Postive: Platform for people to share their creativity and talents
- Negative: “Doom Scrolling”
Popcorn Hack 1
What is an example of a computing innovation with unintended consequences, whether positive or negative?
- ANSWER: ChatGPT can help with tasks like grammar checking an essay or getting quick information. One negative is that AI helpers have is that they enable students to automate their tasks using such tools which remove the academic integrity from their work.
Mitigating Risks/Responsiblity
-
Targeted advertising, machine learning, and data mining are all good exampels of how unintended uses can have both positive and negative effecs
-
Even though it is impossible to predict all possibilities, a responsible programmer’s goal it to forsee and prevent any unintended/negative uses and effects
-
Rapid sharing of a program can lead to events outside the creators control
Popcorn Hack 2
How can responsible programming help contribute to minimizing unintended harmful impacts?
- ANSWER: Responsible programming can encourage people to do their own work rather than copying off of others and will prevent the use of AI helpers that would do the work for them.
Finding Balance
-
Finding a balance between innovation and responsibility is important
-
Programmers shape the impact of their creations on society.
-
Unintended uses of innovations may potentiallyhave harmful impacts on society
-
While negative effects could occur, Innovations often bring unintended benefits by helping advance the current states of technology.
Popcorn Hack 3
Why is it important for programmers to consider the unintended consequences of their innovations?
- ANSWER: It could help them to be better prepared about possible downsides for their innovations and help them anticipate mistakes that they need to work on. For example, if a programmer is prepared for a possible error in their code, they will be better prepared to look for things that could fail in their code and be less likely to have a fail in their code.
Bonus Hack(0.05 extra points)
Self Reflect on your use of technology? Whats your daily screen time? What beneficial effects of technology do you utilize and what are some negative consequences you succcumb to?
- ANSWER: I feel like my use of technology has mostly been productive, however, there can be many aspects of it that distract me from the things that I need to do. For example, apps like Youtube, Instagram and Tiktok have sometimes distracted me from doing homework. On the other hand, technology has made it extremely easy to access information for homework in websites like Canvas, Google docs, and VSCode. Overall, myh daily screentime is about 4-5 hours a day because of all the work that I have online and the occasional distractions from my phone.
Homework
- Choose an innovation(Social media, computers, phones, etc.) and talk about an alternative use than what its actually use for. Then, give the potential positive and negative impacts of the use you came up with
- ANSWER: Instagram is just one example of an innovation with alternative uses. It main purpose is to share experiences and images with others with the goal of connecting people around the world. Nowadays, many people utilize this app to message friends and family rather than just posting images and stories. Some positive effects of this app is that it helps people share what’s going on in their life and give people some insight on what kind of person they are. One negative effect of this is that it can create an unhealthy obsession with how many likes, views, and shares your posts have which can be a detriment to one’s mental health.
- How might you as a programmer implement code that helps your program have less unintented risks.
- ANSWER: Some programmers might implement code functions like try/catch code that reroutes code to another function in case something goes wrong and therefore prevent an error from happening. Not only this, but communication on what the code’s goal is with your team can help facilitate easier code creation and reduce the risk for consequences and errors to occur.