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Weekly Topics - Week 15: IT and Ethics

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  source: pixabay This week’s topic is about ethical theories. I’m picking the cultural relativism theory and apply an IT-related example to that. The cultural relativism theory sees that there is no right and wrong in the different cultures. “ Cultural relativism refers to the idea that the values, knowledge, and behavior of people must be understood within their own cultural context.” [1] When someone judges another cultures food it is an example for ethnocentrism. It means, that this person is using their own culture as the center of the world and evaluate other cultures based on that [2]. I found it hard to research a good example for its IT-related application, since most examples about cultural differences are about the different cuisines (eating bugs, eating pigs, etc.) and about their clothing style. The only, at least sort of, IT-related example I could think of is the cash-culture in Germany. Germans often pay for services and purchases with cash, which can annoy foreig
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Weekly Topics - Week 14: Accessibility and Assistive Technology

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  source: https://www.scewo.com/en/product/# This week’s topic is about accessibility and assistive technology. I’m writing about a real-life case of the principle "if a person has control over any function, it can also be used to control the computer". The example I chose is the smart wheelchair than can climb stairs. The case started with a man from Switzerland, Jose Di Felice. He had a major motorcycle accident in 2016 that resulted in a disability to move both legs and one arm. He found out during his new life on a wheelchair, that stairs are his biggest challenge in his day-to-day life. So, he started to look for a solution [1]. In his research he found the small startup Scewo from Switzerland. The startup has built a wheelchair that can be controlled through a smartphone. It can tackle a range of terrains and has special rubber tracks for climbing stairs. Di Felice asked for a test drive and climbed up successfully the stairs of the local town hall. The wheelchair ca
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Weekly Topics - Week 12: The Historical Hackerdom

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source: Pixabay This week’s topic is about the history of Hackers and the hacker-culture. I’m writing a short opinion piece about the practical applicability of the ideals of Hackers in the modern world. One thing up front: I don’t know much about hacker culture and therefore I don’t really feel in the position to really critique it. I will just throw in some thoughts. Over the time there has been some different hacker work ethics. Especially the hacker ethic of the nineties stuck out to me. Eric S. Raymond wrote a “How to become a Hacker” article. There are some good and basic recommendations in it, like learning a programming language and learn speak English fluently. But his “points for style” (basically how to become an even better hacker) seem weird to me. He suggests aspiring hackers to go to science fiction conventions and read science fiction. That makes it look like he wants his community to separate themselves from the “outer world” and join this very specific circle. He
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Weekly Topics - Week 10: Online Censorship and Privacy

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  This week’s topic is about Censorship, Privacy, and the Internet. I will talk about two examples: One about censorship and one about privacy. Online censorship source: pixabay When it comes to online censorship, China immediately comes to mind. The country is known for strict laws and strict censorship. One interesting example is the popular app WeChat. The app company is based in China and counts over 1.1 billion global users. It is one of the world’s most advanced and popular apps.  It reaches into many corners of a Chinese person’s life: the way much of the country chats, pays, plays, moves, and much more [1]. “The all-encompassing ambition of WeChat includes some of the most cutting-edge, quick-acting, and far-reaching censorship technology on earth.” [1] The app can censor text and images in real-time. One example of WeChat censoring a certain word happened in 2015. The app seemed to censor the word “Uber” [2]. Users who posted about Uber could see their own posts but soon
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Weekly Topics - Week 10: IT Security

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source: Pixabay The task for this week is to write about the cyber security situation in my home country. My home country is Germany, so I’ll write about that country. A good indicator for measuring cyber security is the Mitnick formula. It consists of three parts: technology (networks, firewalls, antiviruses, etc.), training (awareness of different attacks) and policy (set procedure and requirements). Germany has the Federal Office for Information Security. The BSI's goal is to protect government networks and secure central network transitions [2]. Since there’s currently a war in the Ukraine, many countries started to look at their cyber security. Concerns about cyberattacks in Germany have increased a lot. “75% of respondents are concerned that hackers could cripple power or water supplies or shut down communications networks. And it looks like we are not adequately equipped against this.” [1] The IT industry association assumes that the Ukraine war could shift even more
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Weekly Topics - Week 9: IT, Risks, and Ergonomics

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This week’s topic is „IT, risks and ergonomics”. I’m going to write about two Usability cases: One really bad one (a failure) and a good example. Usability measures how user-friendly a product is. Usability refers to the extent to which a product, system, or service can be used by specific users in a specific application context to achieve specific goals effectively, efficiently, and satisfactorily [1]. User Experience (UX) extends the usability term with aesthetic and emotional features. It measures the joy that the user gets by using the product. The Juicero juicer source: [2] First, I’ll write about a bad UX example: The Juicero juicer. This UX fail is so bad, that the company closed its doors in 2017. The website Careerfoundry [2] claims The Juicero has been lauded by multiple UX platforms and experts as one of the best examples of bad UX design we’ve seen in the last few years—so much so that it closed its doors in 2017 out of shame “. The UX mistake from the juicer is, that y
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Weekly Topics - Week 8: Professionalism

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source: pixabay This week’s topic is about Professionalism. I'm going to write a short depiction about the IT sector in my home country. I’ll describe how it changed during the last 20 years. My home country is Germany, so we’ll have a look on the IT sector there. 20 years ago, the society for the German language chose the word “multimedia” as the word for the year [1]. A big change in the IT sector is, that nowadays the customers have all the IT equipment at home. The customers turned into users. That caused IT systems so to be more efficient, but also easier to use and cheaper. Sensitivity to data protection has declined significantly over the past 20 years. While Germans are still concerned about their personal data (especially in an EU comparison), they are now much more open with their data. The vice president of the society of informatics Andreas Oberweis said, that “Today, there is more of a serenity about data protection issues that almost borders on carelessness." The
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