2^8 Shades of Grey

Ethics in computers is as grey as old eggs. Ethics themselves are grey as well, but ethical behavior in computing has a special set of challenges. For one, the Internet has no international borders. Every society in the world has formed their own codes of what is appropriate over thousands of years, but the Internet instantly networks us together into one big grey boiling pot. How do we localize something inherintly global? Take nudity for example. Even Great Britain, with whom we share common roots, has a much freer views of scandalous content. Should we impose our morals on them? Do we filter it? Do we cut off ties completely? I guess it depends. Often answers to grey issues must be grey themselves.

The virtual wife or the actual mistress.

A married man with bad job makes a choice. Let's look at both. Either he escapes to the virtual reality world of Second Life, or he transfers to another department. He hangs out at a zero gravity bar. He eats lunch in the break room. He floats over to a woman and strikes up a conversation. He sits next to a woman and makes small talk. Basic quests together become inseparable campaigns. Casual lunches turn to romantic dinners. He takes her to be his virtually wedded wife. During a work retreat he spends a passionate night in her room. In the end, what does it matter? He is still an adulterer.

Selfie

Idiot genius.

Steve Jobs is always right, except for when he is wrong. Later he claims that contradicting idea as his own, and equilibrium is restored. He felt abandoned by his biological parents. He then abandoned his own illegitemit child, and later named a product line after her. With someone classifiablely genius the yangs will always equal and oppose the yin's.

Jobs's charisma and charm equals his darkness and ability to alienate. This polarity is not exclusive to Jobs and can be found in most genius men or women. The ironically their lives and works influence so many, yet most of us couldn't stand to be around them.

Not all of us can or will be geniuses. Not all of us will have biographies written and documentaries filmed about us, and that's okay. We may be completely level, maybe even boring, but we can and do make a difference. We can influence just a few people and still consider ourselves world changers without all the neurotic overhead.

Association. Stereotyping. Sexism. spells...

As programmers, women already have enough stereotypes to overcome before even getting around to talking about gender. This problem is--of course--not singly inflicting computer science. It's everywhere. The names on women's very own shampoo bottles are not women's names; they're men's. But don't take my word for it. Take her's. I am optimistic that these stereotypes will and are changing, but it is going to take a long time. What are we to do? Well for starters we could reprogram Barbie's asinine sayings which include: "Math is hard." and "Shopping is fun."

The Great Flat.

I work with many skilled professionals who have spent many years honing their craft in the visual effects industry. One in particular wanted to build an awesome matte painting workflow in Blender but found it lacking some key features. Since Blender was open source he figured he could just hire a few developers and then license those tools to his colleges. Not going to happen. The not-so-open Blender big wigs didn't think that aligned with the Blender prerogative and offered no help. Consequently, they lost an opportunity to provide a very powerful feature set. Does that seem right to you? By discouraging monetization it eliminates the product's ability to really nail the specifics, and all that remains is a general mush.

Graphene

Remember the industrial revolution? No you don't. It was a long time ago, but once given the ability to manufactor cheap steel we completely transformed society. And it is happening again. This new material is a one atom think hexagonal sheet of graphite called graphene and electrons love it! Being one atom thick it allows electricity to flow through it with remarkable ease. It is used to create quick-charge batteries that would take about 3 seconds to charge a smart phone, or about 10 minutes to charge an electric car battery. It converts windows into solar panels. It converts a layer of teflon it into a capacitive touch screen. Graphene also allows capacitors to reach their absolute minimum size with maximum efficiency. And you thought silicon was cool? The real kicker is, it is right around the corner. Like steel, once manufactoring methods reduce the cost to create graphene you can expect to see it pretty much everywhere.

Blame with equal gratitude.

The first mandate of hacker ethic concerning the freedom of information is completely valid. People should know what is going on. Our beloved hacker friend in Cuckoo's Egg shows us a potential problem with this mandate: bias. He only sought out millitary secrets, and as a result could only expose those secrets. He doesn't paint a full picture.

I do beg issue with the second mandate. Not with decentralization itself but the negating prefix of de. This strict negativity casts a gloomy shadow over otherwise worthy ambitions. Certainly there comes a time for demolition, but it must be purposed by new construction. We can decentralize organizations, but not without accepting their responsibilies.

Wiki leaks and wistleblowers alike gather attention because exposing secrets is sexy and appealing. But when this exposure dominates the informational canvas we are left only with the erotic. I challenge hacktivists to continue exposing government secrets, but to also equally expose their good deeds. Not so easy is it? Exposing good deads has little sex appeal, but a healthy society requires it.

Zeus hates the NSA

The NSA's new massive spy center in Bluffdale Utah is on the slowest fast track in recent history. Engineers and contractors bypassed many quality standards and practices to get the site up and running as fast as possible. Unfortunately for them, huge lightning bolts tear between components causing 10 meltdowns in the past 13 months. I find myself scoffing at these "clearly unintelligent" contractors while they scramble to get the facility online. For shame. How often to I find myself trying to "fast-track" a project by cutting corners only to find myself cursing, debugging, and cursing? Giving into the lie of "finish it now, deal with the consequences later" only causes pain and personal anguish. Stop the nonsense and think, plan, enact, and repeat.

The t-word.

It is safe to say that we are all pretty good at shoes. We know that our foot goes in the top and the laces--or straps, I don't judge--keep the shoe firmly attached. So when someone says, "I'm not a technological person." You can say, "You're shoes say otherwise." This may sound pretty fussbudgety, but people need to be more exact. I don't see much difference between saying, "I hate technology." and, "I hate Indians." Latitudinous statements like that make you sound ignorant and foolish, because we both know that you spend 66.7% of your life interacting with technology. We spend the remaining 33.3% asleep. So next time, resist the urge to drop the t-word and try saying something like, "Geez, this spreadsheet stuff is hard."

The search box.

Facebook revamps it's "graph search" feature to include searching posts, status updates, and almost everything you ever upload to Facebook. That's great for Facebook, but what does it mean for the user experience? Why do we want quick searches? The crushing amount of information on the web drives this necessity, but I believe there is something more going on. The search box is the paradigm of the simplest and most far reaching human interface we have created. Combo boxes, radio buttons, and other UI widgets have their place, but as we move forward towards better natural language processing and machine learning the computer to human to computer interface will have less clicking and more talking. The question is not "How do read my email?", the question is "How do I communicate with other humans using computers, and how will I talk with computers like human beings?"

Calico: A Villain's Dream

Google announces Calico: immortality though big data. This news makes Winifred Sanderson very happy. Many villains in our good old fashioned melodramas have a large fixation on death, or rather the lack thereof. I am not saying Larry Page is a villain (maybe a little), but I am saying we should stop and think if this pursuit of immortality is indeed a welcomed trait. Overpopulation already threatens this ever shrinking planet. We often find ourselves exhausting natural resources, or polluting perfectly good ones. Advancements in agricultural technology gives us an abundance of food and energy. So what do we do? We supersize. We overeat. We overfish. More. More. More. Now imagine a world where people just won't die. This problem provides us a very ironic dilemma. The only way to sustain life on this world if we never die is to simply stop new life, and for people who fail to suppress the instinct to pack on the pounds, we will certainly fail to suppress the instinct to reproduce.

All brained.

The left brain, right brain theory is flawed. It may have some anatomical grounding, but it is misunderstood and encourages people to polarize themselves as either entirely right brained or entirely left brained. It makes programmers think they can't paint, and makes painters think they can't program. Lets all use the best part of our brain: all of it.