Week 0 Test Prep 5.1 5.2 - LindaLiu1202/lindaliu GitHub Wiki

5.1 Beneficial and Harmful Effects

  • Advancements in technology bring with them an assortment of beneficial and harmful effects
  • Not every effect of a computing innovation is anticipated in advance
  • A single effect can be viewed as both beneficial and harmful by different people or even the same person
  • Advances in computing have generated and increased creativity in other fields, such as medicine, engineering, communications, and the arts
  • Computing innovations can be used in ways their creators didn’t originally intend
    • Responsible programmers try to consider the unintended ways their computing innovations can be used and the potential beneficial and harmful effects of these new uses
    • Sometimes these can even be used in a way that may have a harmful impact on society, the economy, or culture
    • It’s not possible for a programmer to be able to tell the future and all the ways something could go wrong
    • The more people rapidly and constantly using an app or innovation, the more chance that there is for it to go wrong or veer off the intended purpose
  • Quiz Corrections:
    • Q2 Benefit of storing user data: From the perspective of the application’s developers, which of the following is most likely to be a benefit of storing all user data in a database?
    • Answer I chose: C The developers can reduce the amount of data storage required to support the application.
    • Correct Answer: A The developers can analyze the data to make improvements to the application based on user behavior.
    • Reason: Storing user data will increase the amount of data storage needed, which is likely to increase the data storage requirements. By storing user data, the developers can use machine learning and data mining and thereby make improvements based on the users’ needs.

GitHub pages action

  1. Come up with three of your own Beneficial and corresponding Harmful Effects of Computing
  • Beneficial effects: information can pass quickly through the internet, more sources online which you can search/find information online easily, bring more conveniences to our lives
  • Harmful effects: wrong information/rumors can be spread quickly also, false information are hard to remove, hard to distinguish false information from the internet.
  1. Talk about dopamine issues above. Real? Parent conspiracy? Anything that is impacting your personal study and success in High School?
  • It's true how video games and social media impact people chemically. But however, although playing video games and social media generate dopamine and bring us pleasure, but if we spent too much time on these stuff, it will be harmful to our mental health and body since wasting too much time on using phones/computers will eventually make us feel guilty and regret afterwards but still being addicted. Watching videos make me happy, but if I spent the time that I was suppose to use to do my homework on watching videos, I will have to stay up late and be regretful. This is not helping me with being successful in High School and is distracting me and bringing me trouble on my personal study.

5.2 Digital Divide

  • Internet access varies between socioeconomic, geographic, and demographic characteristics, as well as between countries
    • Socioeconomic - how much money comes into the household per year
      • determine if you have disposable income to buy new devices or you have older ones, or if you have high speed internet or no internet in your house
    • Geographic - if you live where there are few people, there might not have high speed internet
      • When go snowboarding at Vermont, there might have no cell phone reception
    • Demographics include, but not isolated to:
      • Age
      • Religion
    • In some countries:
      • Computers are not that common in rural areas
      • Only a small number of websites
      • The internet is used to protect and advocate the government
      • There is a high level of surveillance on the internet to protect the government
  • The “digital divide” refers to differing access to computing devices and the internet, based on socioeconomic, geographic, or demographic characteristics
  • The digital divide can affect both groups and individuals
  • The digital divide raises issues of equity, access, and influence, both globally and locally
  • The digital divide is affected by the actions of individuals, organizations, and governments
  • The following actions could be used to help reduce the digital divide?
    • Providing free education and training on how to use computing devices
    • Providing free or low-cost computing devices to low-income individuals
    • Providing networks and infrastructure to people in remote areas

GitHub pages action -- Digital Empowerment

  • How does someone empower themselves in a digital world?
    • First, he needs access to the digital world, which can be using a phone or a computer, and also needs to learn.
  • How does someone that is empowered help someone that is not empowered? Describe something you could do at Del Norte HS.
    • We can collaborate and cooperate together. Sharing ideas and thoughts, offering feedbacks and improvements, and encouraging one another.
  • Is paper or red tape blocking digital empowerment? Are there such barriers at Del Norte? Elsewhere?
    • No because people can always find ways to access the website or information that they want. When on Del Norte wifi, there are certain websites that was blocked from the students, but students can find other ways, such as using a vpn, hotspot, phone, etc. to access these websites. However, I am not one of the students who do that and I am sure not everyone do that, so at least these barriers is not totaling useless.