Preamble

In my life, I generally try to hold myself to a high standard of ethical behavior. I believe that I exhibit mostly a blend of Virtue Ethics and Deontology. When confronted with a situation that requires quick decision making, I tend toward Deontological evaluation of a situation to determine the “right” course of action. If a situation is presented and there is proper time for careful thought, I try to examine the potential value of each choice that is available to me. There are times however that I choose to participate in behavior that the other me would not approve of. I am not sure why I do this as I often later get upset with myself for giving in to the allure of illicit behavior. My greatest desire is to continue to improve my positive ethical behavior and squeeze out the negative me.

Personal Code of Ethics

My personal code of ethics includes ideas from many of the topics we have studied. I believe that it is most important to be honest in every action undertaken. If honesty is the focus of a persons intent, then the rest of the morally right actions fall into place more easily. Without honesty how can one be believed when stating that their intent is to create software that has no intent to cause harm. A guiding force in most business relationships is that of trust. Trust is not something that is gained through dishonest actions. This clearly is an important part of a computing professionals life, which supports my idea that honesty is the starting point for my personal code of ethics.

To expand on this,

• honesty
• fairness
• balance
• hard work
• treat others as I would expect to be treated

Position Statements

My ethical thinking is guided by these theories of ethics, Virtue Ethics and Deontology.

I propose to do the following in my political life continue to fight oppression in all its forms, digital and otherwise.

My stance on whistleblowing is that more protections that are real and final are implemented by those in power. These protections should extend to all whistleblowers, those in government and in business.

I believe privacy is part of the American value system and it should be protected vigilantly by the people. (Fourth Amendment) I believe that the protections therin should extend into the digital world in order to supress opression.

I believe free speech is in need of greater protection. Free anonymous speech also needs this protection.

My stance on pornography is that it is protected under the law, regardless of how degrading some of it is, so far as it is performed at the consent of rational adults. Some of what is produced it depraved, but freedom is important.

I pledge to behave this way in my gaming and social media life to be always thoughtful and speak of others how I desire to be spoken of.

My considered opinion on the future of information technology ethics is that there is no way to imagine what is coming. I think people should be careful to move along too easily with technologies. People should ask themselves, “Just because we can, does that mean we should?”

My Digital Life

Looking over my digital media log, I notice that I average 6 hours per day online. This is mostly due to working on school related projects. Even in the regular semester I probably average this much. If this is corrected for, I think the actual “entertainment” time spent online averages 3-4 hrs a day on a normal day.  I have closed my Facebook account several times due to my disgust for the content that people post and the negativity and flame wars that erupt. I may yet again do so in order to cut the time I spend sitting doing nothing productive. I do not plan to make too many other changes in my activity due to the fact that I enjoy the other aspects of digital entertainment. This includes video games, music selection, and related non-social media.