Author Archives: Gray Streetman

The most important issues of the Digital Age

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Learning about Deepfake videos on Monday was really a surprise to me. I had never heard of this technology before, although I knew that image and video manipulation software did exist. It seems that by utilizing machine learning and artificial intelligence, the Deepfake videos are really boundless in terms of quality and what they can do. Therein lies the danger in their usage.

I also found the discussion at the end of class where we decided on the most important issue of the Digital Age particularly important and revealing. We determined that data sovereignty and data privacy were the two most important issues. This decision makes sense, as many issues that we had talked about previously in class, such as fake news and social media, have this aspect as a central element. I can’t help but wonder if other people share our same views. I would hope people take these affronts to privacy as serious and do not just disregard them. Otherwise, the issue will continue unhindered. It does seem to me that more attention is being given to this topic as of late, which bodes well for an eventual solution to this problem.

I am surprised that more people weren’t troubled by the Deepfake videos. I would argue this also has grave and foreboding consequences, like the invalidity of all video evidence in the legal system and thus the inability to believe what one sees. This paradigm shift would be a huge problem and would be severely deleterious to the functioning of the legal system.  Having an eyewitness needed to assert the authenticity of a video sounds a bit strange in itself, but it is certainly a possibility for the future.

Fake News and Lethal Robots

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In the article, “Fake News and Partisan Epistemology”, Regina Rini expresses concerns about the epidemic of fake news being spread so widely and rapidly on social media platforms today. Fake news is deliberately deceptive, it is meant to catch the eye and catch clicks for the purpose of generating revenue for someone’s website. A variety of epistemic virtues are strangely abandoned on the platform of social media. The article investigates what features of social media make it so easy for people to abandon epistemic virtue. Rini points out that partisanship is the reason that people are more likely to surrender epistemic virtue and readily jump upon wild and outrageous conspiracy theories which to anyone with a critical eye would warrant some skepticism. The way partisanship manifests itself as an opponent to truth is when people share particular political affiliations with others. Those people are seen as closer to themselves and are seen as right simply because the receiver of the fake news assumes that anyone who shares their political opinions must be feeding them proper information. This mainly has to do as well with our willingness to believe testimony outright rather than cross checking every bit of information that is fed to us. Believing testimony is individually reasonable and Rini argues that the mechanism of social media takes advantage of this individually reasonable behavior and co-opts the space of testimony in order to spread misinformation. Rini believes a possible solution to this phenomenon is for social media platforms to flag individual accounts which regularly spread misinformation and to create a sort of score which measures credibility thereby making people take more responsibility for the things they post.

This article begins to consider the implications of machines used as military weaponry. Specifically, should machines be able to kill people in combat? It’s clear that even things that are not designed as weapons have the power and potential to be used as weapons..even a toaster. While robots themselves were never intended to replace humans in war they serve as a way to potentially decrease casualties while also being able to make the choice to kill another person at will. The article explains that this is exactly the issue in that robots have no “will” or morality and than even while war literally means death the only people who can be the perpetrators of death must also be willing to be the recipient of it themselves.
After detailing the various background information regarding the types of weapons and the laws of war, the authors proceed to address the major question of their essay: “should we relinquish the decision to kill a human to a non-human machine?” (134). In order to treat this profound question, the authors expound on the philosophical definition of a human being, a being with intrinsic dignity and rights according to Immanuel Kant. Using a robot to kill a human treats a human being as a mere object, and therefore denies human dignity. Furthermore, the authors discuss morality as an essentially human characteristic, and maintain that a robot could only imitate moral actions, without being in itself moral. They also discuss LAWS as being potentially dishonorable, in that they negate the risk of immediate sacrifice inherent in war. Without the potential for sacrifice, the use of robots becomes cowardly, and thus contrary to what is considered honorable military conduct. The authors conclude by postulating a complete ban on autonomous weapons systems, much like the current status of chemical and gas weapons, considered too heinous to be tolerated.

Reflecting on Monday’s discussion

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What  struck me most from the discussion on Monday would be just how widespread and trenchant access large companies, like Facebook and Google, have to our ‘personal’ data. This trend worries me considerably. I feel like privacy rights are almost obsolete in an age where so much information is readily available digitally, often without the user’s knowledge. Luis’ requesting his data from Google really substantiates this point. There really is an exhaustive record of everything we do on the internet.

Now of course, we all see this as troubling and we all don’t desire our personal information to be collected in such a manner. However, we all continue to use Facebook, etc. for a variety of reasons. Whether it be convenience, comfort or habit, we continue to be involved in social media and other digital enterprises that result in data collection. To be truly removed would be living off the grid, something few people are willing to do. This fact led me to the unhappy conclusion that this type of infringement on privacy is an axiomatic result of living in the digital age. I hope this is not the case, but unless people really make a concerted effort to address this issue, I’m doubtful of anything changing soon. That being said, I do believe many people are concerned about this and are actively trying to change things for the better.

The Secret History of Women in Coding

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The New York Times article “The Secret History of Women in Coding” tells the story of how computer programming contrary to its association with masculinity today, was once in fact seen as “women’s work”. Coding was seen as secondary to the hard work of creating the hardware which is why it was casted unto women. On the job the women were extremely adept at diagnosing problems with hardware as well since they were tasked to understand it so well. Concepts such as compiling and debugging were discovered by the women who worked with the computers. In fact, it was these women who discovered that the code never really worked the first time. Through the story of Mary Allen Wilkes, who became a computer programmer after being discouraged from pursuing a career in law, the article shows how open programming used to be to neophytes. If you didn’t know how to code, you would learn on the job. Despite the sexism and the pay disparities, Wilkes described how the relationship between men and women on the job was actually quite inclusive and close-knit.

When the number of coding jobs exploded in the 50’s and 60’s women were still on the forefront of computer coding,however the year 1984 significantly changes the way computers are being utilized in science and culture at large. The invention of the personal computer meant that boys would now be favored to learn how to code for no particular reason. If a computer was often bought it was almost always put in a boys bedroom and he would then be at an advantage to learn coding himself prior to entering high school. This, in turn, also begins to switch who becomes desirable as someone who codes and leads to many of the culture identities present in large tech firms today that favor these “hardcore” coders over anyone else and seek to reproduce this type of personality. After 1984 there was a significant drop off in the amount of women majoring in computer science and actively pursuing it as a job post grad. These numbers remained on the downward trend until recently when about 26% of computer science majors are women, this too however is still grim and has a matriculation of about 3% of women represented in large industry firms such as Twitter.

The last section of the article dealt with present-day attempts to remedy the problem of exclusionary and homogenous computing. The author mentioned efforts by Carnegie-Mellon to make the computer science program more accommodating and welcoming to people with less experience, an effort which has proven very efficacious in bringing more women into computer science. The author also brought up various coding boot camps and other initiatives that have contributed to the rising interest in coding and computer science by various segments of the population. The article concludes with an interview of three young, prodigious, female coders who won a hackathon in New York City who express the same frustration with the “boys’ club” atmosphere previously discussed in the article.

Pushing Coding Education

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The recent push for education in coding/programming in recent years is what struck me most about the reading. This struck me the most because of my lack of exposure to anything computer science related until high school. I did not notice any coding camps, school programs or anything else geared toward computer science until AP Computer Science, offered my senior year. Even then, the class was the first one ever taught at my high school. Even the professor was unfamiliar with the material.

Therefore, I had trouble situating the push for coding/programming. My time in high school definitely saw the advent of preoccupation with STEM, but computer science was oddly left out. Reading this article made me wonder why my school district did not push coding as much as other schools apparently do. This reflection did not really come to fruition, but it was an interesting thought.

The other aspect of our discussion that piqued my interest was the semantic difference and the different connotations of ‘coding’ versus ‘programming’. One thing apparent to me from the discussion was the hasty effort to teach people to code, as opposed to how to program. I suppose a main reason behind this endeavor would be the relative ease by which one can learn to code. We have learned a bit of coding in this class, but many complicated aspects of computer science related to programming remain foreign to us. On the other hand, teaching someone to program probably requires more effort and time, so it is less appealing as a means of giving people marketable skills in the workplace. However, this neglect undoubtedly will inconvenience people who learn to ‘code’ languages that may become obsolete.

Motivation

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After reading the article written by Vannevar Bush, I noticed a paradoxical link. So much of the effort and innovation of scientists during World War Two went to developing weaponizable technologies, such as the atom bomb, to win the war instead of these scientists’ actual areas of research. Moreover, many of the scientists who developed war technology later regretted it or had misgivings from the start, most famously Robert Oppenheimer. However, one can make the argument that without the menace of the Axis powers, many technologies originally used for warfare, but soon after adapted into commercial purposes, would not have been invented. Furthermore, I think this relates to a tangent we had at the end of class on Monday. A spider makes its web to catch flies. Without the need to catch flies, why would the spider need a web? Similarly, without the threat of military defeat why would the nations involved in the war have developed technologies such as nuclear fission, jet propulsion and better radar? I find this argument to be central to the question of why human beings do anything in the first place.

Does this mean that war is necessary for innovation? Conflict at least is in my opinion. If there is no discomfort, or vision of how things could be better, then no one would ever change anything. An unequivocal way to evoke change is through a stimulus. This may just be a regrettable fact of existence here, but it is inalterable.

 

Depression Quest

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Depression Quest was an excellent example of digital technology being used to spread awareness about a particular issue while destigmatizing it. Being an interactive game, Depression Quest is able to captivate its players more than a mere article. Moreover, this interactive format allows the players to identify with the depressed person and experience life through the eyes of someone suffering with this disease. In this way, I thought Depression Quest was remarkable in that it builds understanding of depression by obliging the players to make everyday decisions within the constraints of a clinically depressed mind. This experience really helps the players to understand the torment that comes everyday living with this disease.
On a more technical level, the use of Twine to create Depression Quest aided my understanding of just how versatile the format is. The story was very well crafted and included many layers but still operated based upon the choice paradigm that we experimented with in class. I found this inspiring, because Depression Quest shows how empowering and expedient a simple digital tool can become when used effectively.
I am sure most of my peers will echo that they tried to choose the healthiest choices possible throughout the game, hopefully leading to the most auspicious outcome. I thought this was another important aspect of Depression Quest. The game does not truly have an ending, merely outcomes that indicate what the protagonist’s future may be. This is important in order to understand the impossibility of ridding oneself definitively of depression, which the developers stress in the epilogue.