Big Idea 5: Impact of Computing

New Ways to Communicate and Interact

  • Thanks to the Internet and the ease of collaboration and sharing, programs and apps (software applications) can be quickly and easily shared with people worldwide.
  • These can sometimes have a huge impact, positive or negative, on people, and sometimes have additional results not originally foreseen by the software developers.
  • World Wide Web: which was originally designed for scientists to share their research.
  • Targeted advertising: which can be helpful for businesses and consumers when looking for a specific item.
  • Social media: which has been used to stream events across the globe, sometimes helps to change history.
  • Machine learning and data mining: help find patterns and identify insights in data, leading to new innovations.
  • Online learning: is an education model that would not be possible without the tools of communication available via the Internet.
  • Programmers and businesses: try to identify potential negative uses, but it is seldom possible to think of all the ways other people could use an innovation.

Access to Information

Cloud Computing

  • Cloud computing: offers new ways for people to communicate, making collaboration easier and more efficient.
  • Storing documents in the ā€œcloudā€ simply means they are stored on a computer server at a location different than where the owner of the files is located.

Digital Divide

  • Technology has had a major impact on the world, enabling innovation through the sharing of resources and computational artifacts.
  • It also allows us to virtually meet with people from anywhere.
  • It is helping us on the path of becoming a true global society.
  • The impact of the digital divide includes access to information, knowledge, markets, and different cultures.

Bias in Computing Innovations

  • Bias: which is intentional or unintentional prejudice for or against certain groups of people, shows up in computing innovations too.
  • Humans: write the algorithms, and our biases can make their way into the algorithms and the data used by innovations without us realizing it.
  • Artificial intelligence programs: are used more and more in ways such as screening applications of job candidates, determining if a person merits credit to purchase a house, and locating what areas have more crime.

Crowdsourcing

  • Crowdsourcing: allows people to share information and ask the ā€œcrowdā€ā€” anyone who accesses the site—for feedback, to help solve problems, find employment, or for funding.
    • Another use of crowdsourcing is when scientists share data and ask nonscientists, or ā€œcitizen scientists,ā€ to look for and report on patterns or other interesting features of the data or to ā€œdonateā€ computer time during periods of time their machine is inactive.
    • This helps to ā€œscale upā€ processing capability at little to no cost to the organization seeking the resources.

Legal and Ethical Concerns

  • Anything a person creates, including any computational artifacts created with a computer, is the intellectual property of that person.
  • Material created by someone else that you use in any way should always be cited.
  • Peer-to-peer networks exist that are used to illegally share files of all types.
  • Devices that continually monitor and collect data, such as a voice-activated device we install or video cameras used for facial recognition posted in our communities, can have legal and/or ethical issues.

Creative Commons

  • Creative Commons: provides a way for creators of software, images, music, videos, and any computational artifact to share their creations with stipulations for sharing and permission from the author clearly indicated.
  • Digital data: is easy to find, copy, and paste, so ensuring you have written permission from the creator or owner is important.

Open-Source Software

  • Not only do we have access to data but to software as well.
  • Open source software: is software that is freely shared, updated, and supported by anyone who wants to do so.
  • The availability of this software for everyone has greatly expanded people’s abilities to participate in a variety of tasks that many would not have been able to participate in otherwise.

Open Access

  • The sharing of huge amounts of public data by organizations, such as the U.S. government, provides the opportunity for anyone to search for information or to help solve problems.
  • In addition, the availability of open databases in a variety of fields—including science, entertainment, sports, and business—has benefited people everywhere.

Search Trends and Analytics

  • Social media sites: as well as search engines publish what the most frequent searches and posts are about.
  • Our browsers keep a list of our most frequently visited sites on their home page to help us out.
  • The search engines are able to identify when more people than usual are watching a video or searching for a topic.
  • Analytics: identify trends for marketing purposes and help businesses determine what and where customers are searching for their products and their competitors’ products, how long an item sits in a virtual shopping cart, and when people buy.

Data Mining

  • Data mining: is a field of study that analyzes large datasets.
  • Machine learning: is a subset of data mining.
  • Machine learning uses algorithms to analyze data and predict behavior and is used in Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Personally Identifiable Information (PII)

  • Any information that identifies you is considered Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
  • It includes data such as your address, age, or social security number.
  • It also includes data about you, such as your medical or financial information.
  • Our PII information is also used by websites to show us certain information or related topics based on our prior visits.

Privacy

  • Digital footprints and fingerprints: are the trail of little pieces of data we leave behind as a sign of our presence as we go through our daily lives.
  • Many people willingly provide personal information to sites to gain access or privileges, whether it’s through sports teams, shopping, or restaurants.
    • Their data is stored and may be sold with or without their knowledge or permission.
  • Many web browsers now have ā€œincognitoā€ or ā€œprivateā€ modes so that web searches and file downloads are not recorded in the web history.
  • Some web browsers attest that they do not track and retain your search data.

Protecting Our Data

  • Many aspects of our lives are much easier today because of the easy access to all sorts of sites and information that the Internet provides.
  • This can range from shopping, entertainment, and sports sites to price comparisons.
  • Cybersecurity: has a global impact because now anyone from anywhere can attempt to gain unauthorized entry to someone else’s computer, data, servers, or network.

Security

  • The security of our data deals with the ability to prevent unauthorized individuals from gaining access to it and preventing those who can view our data from changing it.
  • Strong passwords: help block those trying to gain unauthorized access.
  • Multifactor authentication: is another layer that is increasingly used.

Cybersecurity

  • Cybersecurity: protects our electronic devices and networks from attacks and unauthorized use.
    • These attacks can come in many forms and can have a major impact on those affected.
  • Different types of attacks cause different problems.
  • Data: may be damaged or the device may be used to further spread the malware.
  • Phishing: attacks create e-mail and/or websites that look a legitimate hoping to induce a person to click on the malicious link.
  • Computer viruses: are like human viruses.
    • They attach themselves to, or are part of, an infected file.
  • Keylogging software: is a form of malware that captures every keystroke and transmits it to whomever planted it.

Cryptography

  • Cryptography: is the writing of secret codes.
  • Encryption: is converting a message to a coded format.
  • Deciphering: the encrypted message is called decryption.
  • Security: also relates to encrypting data before it is transmitted to ensure it remains secure if it is intercepted during transmission.

Public Key Encryption

  • Public key encryption: uses open standards, meaning the algorithms used are published and available to everyone and are discussed by experts and interested parties and known by all.
    • The key is what keeps information secret until the person it is intended for decrypts it.

Securing the Internet

  • The Internet is based on a ā€œtrustā€ model.
    • This means that digital certificates can be purchased from Certificate Authorities (CAs), which identify trusted sites.
    • They issue certificates that businesses, organizations, and individuals load to their websites.
  • The certificates verify to web browsers that the encryption keys belong to the business, thereby enabling online purchases and the sending and receiving of secure documents.