Digital Society
There is no doubt that Information communication technology
(ICT) plays a vital role in this digital era that helps everyone (the individuals,
businesses and organizations) for information exchange in an effective and
efficient manner. With the advancement in information and communication
technology, almost everything has changed and continues to do so from its
original form to this stage of artificial logical form. Evidently, the Internet
has created an enormous impact in every sector of human life. The way and mode
of happening or conducting various activities has drastically changed. Whatever
we do or wherever we go, we notice the changes brought to us by the Internet.
Now, it is difficult to piece the sector that is aloof from the Internet. The
ICT innovations continue to redefine and restructure our society, economy,
culture and everything- our lifestyles with a scale and speed never imagined or
noticed before.
A society is a group of individuals or a large social group
sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same
political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Digital society is the
consequence of the adoption and integration of information and communication
technology by the modern societies in their day to day activities, culture and
lifestyles. It is not limited/bound to any geographical boundary. Digital
society true to its nature depends on three stakeholders such as society,
technology and content. Mobile and cloud technologies, Big Data and the
Internet of Things (IoT) offer unimaginable opportunities. They ease the
improvement of citizens' lives and efficiency to many areas: health services,
transportation, energy, agriculture, manufacturing, retail and public
administration. Similarly, they can also improve the governing process by
helping the policy-makers to make better decisions inclusive of citizens.
Likewise, the internet has considerable potential to promote democracy,
cultural diversity and human rights, say for example, freedom of expression and
right to information. Digital society opens up new ways to transparency,
participation and innovation. Just look around, you will find anyone and
everyone engaged in interaction with one another in digital space.
Many advanced concepts of Digital Society (Smart Town, Smart
City, Smart Villages and many other smart and advanced services) are now in a
process to become a part of our life. The importance of technologies in society
is taking strong roots. Similarly, its interaction has led to the development
of Digital Society as a field of study. For this reason digital society is
considered as an interdisciplinary research area. As a result, many
universities around the world have already begun the study of Digital Society
as a course in undergraduate and graduate level. No doubt, Digital Literacy is
the backbone of digital society. It includes Computer Literacy, Network
Literacy, Web Literacy, Internet Literacy. Media Literacy, Multimedia Literacy
etc.
A Digital Society is an
interdisciplinary research area and a kind of progressive society formed as a
result of adaptation and integration of advanced technologies into the society
and culture.
Stakeholders of Digital
Society:
Digital society depends on the following stakeholders or
component:
·
Society: It includes a group of individuals
living in a community in a particular geographical area/territory.
·
Technologies:It includes software technology, communication
technology, database technology , network technology, multimedia technology
etc.
·
Content:It includes data, information, knowledge,
documentation etc.
Challenges of Digital
Society
We continue to move towards Digital Nepal. However, there are
many issues acting as a barrier to stop or slow down the creation of a digital
society. Following are some of the challenges:
·
Lack of proper
co-operation, coordination and collaboration among the stake-holders.
·
Little or no proper
planning of digital product uses and their applicability in common people.
·
Unavailability and
shortage of skilled manpower.
·
Limited fund and
budget for the work.
·
Lack of policy
implementation.
·
Little or no
infrastructure.
·
No encouraging
initiatives from the government authorities.
·
Less involvement of
common people into the agenda.
Computer Ethics
Information revolution has altered many aspects of our daily
life activities of education, business, employment, medicine, security,
transportation, entertainment, and so on. Consequently, ICT has affected the
community life and family life. Similarly, it has Impacted on human
relationships, education, careers, freedom etc in both good and bad ways. No
wonder, computer and information ethics can be understood as that branch of
applied ethics. It studies and analyzes such social and ethical impacts of ICT.
Ethics are a structure of standards and practices that influence
how people lead their lives, it is not desirable to strictly follow these
ethics. However, it forms the basic norms for the benefit of everyone. Ethics
do not have the force of laws. They indicate what is right or wrong. Ethics
reflects society's views about what is right and what is wrong. One may wonder
if ethics has anything to do with computers. Of course, one needs ethics to
know how and for what to use a computer.
On turning to the history of computers, we notice that the term
computer ethics was first coined by Walter Maner, a professor at Bowling Green
State University.
Computer ethics are a set of moral standards that govern the
use, development and management of information and communication technology.
Such is the society's views about the use of computers. Privacy concerns,
intellectual property rights and effects on the society are some of the common
issues of computer ethics.
Ethics deals with placing a 'value' on acts according to whether
they are “good” or “bad”. When computers first came for use in society at
large, the absence of ethical standards about their use and related issues
caused some problems. However, as their use became widespread in every aspect
of our lives, discussions in computer ethics resulted in some kind of a
consensus. Today, many of these rules have been formulated as laws, either
national or international. Computer crimes and computer fraud are now common
terms. There are laws against them, and everyone is responsible for knowing
what constitutes computer crime and computer fraud.
Computer ethics deals
with the procedures, values and practices that govern the process of consuming
computing technology and its related disciplines without damaging or violating
the moral values and beliefs of any individual, organization or entity.
Various
national and international professional societies and organizations have
produced a code of ethics documents to give basic behavioral guidelines to
computing professionals and users. They include:
·
Association for Computing
Machinery
ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
·
Australian Computer
Society
ACS Code of Ethics
ACS Code of Professional Conduct
·
British Computer Society
BCS Code of Conduct
Code of Good Practice (retired May 2011)
·
Computer Ethics Institute
Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics
·
IEEE
IEEE Code of Ethics
IEEE Code of Conduct
·
League of Professional
System Administrators
The System Administrators' Code of Ethics
The commandments of
computer ethics have been defined by the Computer Ethics Institute.
·
Do not use a computer
to harm other people.
·
Do not use a computer
to interfere with other people's work.
·
Do not spy on another
person's computer data.
·
Do not use a computer
to steal information.
·
Do not spread
misinformation by using computer technology.
·
Do not use or copy
software for which you have not paid.
·
Do not use other
people's computer resources without authorization or proper compensation.
·
Do not claim ownership
on a work which is the output of someone else's intellect.
·
Think about the social
consequences of the program you develop.
·
Use a computer in ways
that show consideration and respect.
Assignment
1
1.
Define the term
Digital Society and list out the different stakeholders of digital
society.
2.
What do you mean by
Computer Ethics? What are the commandments of computer ethics?
No comments:
Post a Comment