451 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2017
    1. We argue that artifacts support human behavior by providing adaptations, but these adaptations can expand or restrict human actions.

      Those adaptations are also framed under the guise of fulfilling the prime objective of fulfilling the business needs, i.e to compete for market share, increase profit margins or simply, "Will this make "them" give "us" more money?. This objective is constrained to view humans in the identity of consumer. It is through this identity we derive the canvas of needs which our bosses and their bosses let us create adaptations.

      Many designers are limited to designing a set of adaptations in their artifacts by what markets signals as profitable. Those who are fortunate enough to work in non-profits or worker coops may have more freedom to resist the unethical demands of the market forces.

    1. If an individual opts out, this should mean that their name appears nowhere on the social network diagram (even if they are identified by another individual as being part of their social network). For instance, in the sample map, you can see that the map would be very disjointed if John and Holly opted out of the SNA.

      Are we allowed to include nodes for John and Holly if they are identified by others, but without using their name? For example, we would refer to John as Anonymous 1 and Holly as Anonymous 2. Or would we have to exclude any data that involves them, regardless of anonymity?

    1. It is possible to use data collected from Twitter to discern the identities of tweet authors, which can then be used to find and collect additional information from additional sources.

      This brings up the question of generational use and regard for privacy: the 13-19 age group, the 20-26 age group and those in the older age sets all have a different regard for what is or should be private. What could be an effective approach to a solution to this research and ethical challenge?

    1. Mengele conducted medical experiments on twins. He also directed serological experiments on Roma (Gypsies), as did Werner Fischer at Sachsenhausen, in order to determine how different "races" withstood various contagious diseases. The research of August Hirt at Strasbourg University also intended to establish "Jewish racial inferiority."

      There is no ethical thing about this "Jewish racial inferiority" because with the resilience of some races to different diseases, they established the "inferiority" at where they were researching. It causes problems because it makes it cloudy to the minds if they were helping or not.

    2. Other gruesome experiments meant to further Nazi racial goals were a series of sterilization experiments, undertaken primarily at Auschwitz and Ravensbrueck.

      This also is unethical, because people have basic rights to make children or offspring. This is unethical because it is was given without consent which in this time and place was not unusual. This shows that with mass sterilization was uncalled for and that with the after effects made it ethical and had to have consent for the procedure.

    3. Unethical medical experimentation carried out during the Third Reich may be divided into three categories.

      By unethical, doctors and scientists experimented on people without supervision or ethics. This shows that in the Nazi Germany that the experiments could be anything and it can have no ethics, this helped with the code of ethics we follow today.

  2. Nov 2016
  3. Sep 2016
    1. the automatic collection of students’ data through interactions with educational technologies as a part of their established and expected learning experiences raises new questions about the timing and content of student consent that were not relevant when such data collection required special procedures that extended beyond students’ regular educational experiences of students

      Useful reminder. Sounds a bit like “now that we have easier access to data, we have to be particularly careful”. Probably not the first reflex of most researchers before they start sending forms to their IRBs. Important for this to be explicitly designated as a concern, in IRBs.

    2. Responsible Use

      Again, this is probably a more felicitous wording than “privacy protection”. Sure, it takes as a given that some use of data is desirable. And the preceding section makes it sound like Learning Analytics advocates mostly need ammun… arguments to push their agenda. Still, the notion that we want to advocate for responsible use is more likely to find common ground than this notion that there’s a “data faucet” that should be switched on or off depending on certain stakeholders’ needs. After all, there exists a set of data use practices which are either uncontroversial or, at least, accepted as “par for the course” (no pun intended). For instance, we probably all assume that a registrar should receive the grade data needed to grant degrees and we understand that such data would come from other sources (say, a learning management system or a student information system).

    1. the use of data in scholarly research about student learning; the use of data in systems like the admissions process or predictive-analytics programs that colleges use to spot students who should be referred to an academic counselor; and the ways colleges should treat nontraditional transcript data, alternative credentials, and other forms of documentation about students’ activities, such as badges, that recognize them for nonacademic skills.

      Useful breakdown. Research, predictive models, and recognition are quite distinct from one another and the approaches to data that they imply are quite different. In a way, the “personalized learning” model at the core of the second topic is close to the Big Data attitude (collect all the things and sense will come through eventually) with corresponding ethical problems. Through projects vary greatly, research has a much more solid base in both ethics and epistemology than the kind of Big Data approach used by technocentric outlets. The part about recognition, though, opens the most interesting door. Microcredentials and badges are a part of a broader picture. The data shared in those cases need not be so comprehensive and learners have a lot of agency in the matter. In fact, when then-Ashoka Charles Tsai interviewed Mozilla executive director Mark Surman about badges, the message was quite clear: badges are a way to rethink education as a learner-driven “create your own path” adventure. The contrast between the three models reveals a lot. From the abstract world of research, to the top-down models of Minority Report-style predictive educating, all the way to a form of heutagogy. Lots to chew on.

  4. Jul 2016
  5. Jun 2016
    1. demanding that technologies designed for a group of people be designed and built, in part, by those people

      Despite some differences, it sounds a bit like the standard by which risks and benefits of research are measured in terms of a given population. Since the troublesome Tuskegee syphilis experiments, it has led to the evaluation of “fair or just distribution of risks and benefits to eligible participants” (WP). The connection may be a little bit strained, especially since Zuckerman is talking about pragmatic issues instead of ethical ones. But there’s some insight in this line of thought, IMHO.

    1. Nevertheless, there were a few who questioned that definition of fairness and challenged the assumption that it was wrong for reviewers to take institutional affiliation and history into consider- ation. "We consider a result from a scientist who has never before been wrong much more seriously than a similar report from a scientist who has never before been right. . . . It is neither unnatural nor wrong that the work of scientists who have achieved eminence through a long record of important and suc- cessful research is accepted with fewer reservations than the work of less eminent scientists" (196). "A reviewer may be justified in assuming at the outset that [well-known] people know what they are do- ing" (211). "Those of us who publish establish some kind of track record. If our papers stand the test of time . . . it can be expected that we have acquired expertise in scientific methodology" (244). (This last respondent is a woman and a Nobel laureate.)

      Fish reporting on the minority in response to Peters and Ceci who argued that track records should count in peer review of science

    1. In rare cases, a questionable, published paper may acquire“orphan” status (Rennie & Flanagin, 1994, p. 469), as allconcerned try to wash their hands of it, invoking hyperlaborspecialization as grounds for exoneration. Such a scenario isinconceivable under the standard model, where authorshipand accountability are isomorphic. But when authorship/ownership of a study is distributed across multiple contrib-utors, many of whom may have zero or weak relation-ships—whether personal or institutional—with their myriadcoworkers (Katz & Martin, 1997), the practical (i.e., en-forceable) allocation of accountability may pose intractableproblems

      orphan papers: where everybody washes hand of poor results by saying it wasn't their specialisation. [[Why is this a problem, actually? The point is that we catch fraudulent or wrong papers, not that we have somebody to blame.

    2. ow, for instance, should a promotion andtenure committee view the contribution of the 99th listedauthor on a particle physics paper or the 36th author on agenome sequencing study? What may seem to constitute aminiscule portion of a single journal article may, in fact,have consumed a significant amount of that individual’sprofessional time and energy. T

      what is value of middle authorship?

    3. e need toconsider how multiple authorship, in extremis—what I havechosen to term ‘hyperauthorship’— undermines commonlyheld assumptions about the nature and ethical entailments ofauthorship, and how, in exceptional cases, it can lead tofundamental questions about the integrity of the researchcommunity as a whole. Unfortunately, little effort is madein the biomedical literature to distinguish systematicallybetween what might be termed acceptable levels of multipleauthorship and unacceptable levels of hyperauthorship.Studies of coauthorship trends, as will become clear,

      makes distinction between "acceptable levels of multiple authorship and unacceptable levels of hyperauthorship.

  6. May 2016
  7. Apr 2016
    1. Doug Muder points out that "freedom" is often invoked by people who want to deny rights to others. He says "big government" is often required to enforce rights. A strong example is the southern states during the century following the Civil War -- and even still today.

      I agree. But it is also true that our big government has some serious problems. It is too often an abuser of rights, rather than a defender. As usual, these abuses fall mainly on minorities and the poor. But they affect almost everyone.

      http://www.spectacle.org/0400/natural.html<br> Jonathan Wallace gives a strong argument that "natural rights" don't exist. Rights are determined by the consensus of a society. They do not have or need any stronger justification.

  8. Mar 2016
    1. We strived to make our work as participant-researchers transparent and dialogic by sharing tentative findings and engaging in dialogue about our inquiries into learning in CLMOOC online, as well as offline in conferences with CLMOOC participants in attendance.

      Being open about what we are doing as participant researchers is vital - always give opportunities for opt out and remind folk that conversations might be used.

    2. Responding participants either requested to have their online identities remain connected to their professional learning artifacts by affirming the use of their first names, or indicated they would like a pseudonym used.

      I think this is important. Creators have a right not to be anonymised in research if they wish

  9. Feb 2016
  10. Dec 2015
    1. The idea was to pinpoint the doctors prescribing the most pain medication and target them for the company’s marketing onslaught. That the databases couldn’t distinguish between doctors who were prescribing more pain meds because they were seeing more patients with chronic pain or were simply looser with their signatures didn’t matter to Purdue.
  11. Nov 2015
    1. Bureaucratic cultures tend to discourage people from speaking candidly. Lack of candor can be a deterrent to success, before it ever reaches the level of outright lies. Lack of candor means:

      • outright lies (saying something you know to be false)
      • self-deception (believing what you want to believe)
      • deliberate omissions of facts
      • thinking one thing, but saying something different
      • having an idea that may be of value, but saying nothing
      • being called upon to give an honest opinion, but deciding to say what is easier, or what you think others want to hear
      • obscure jargon, or meaningless platitudes that give the impression everything is going fine or great. (This is a big red flag when it appears in corporate reports.)

      "Investing Between the Lines: How to Make Smarter Decisions by Decoding CEO Communications", L.J. Rittenhouse (recommended by Warren Buffet in his 2012 Shareholder Letter)

      Truth-Telling: Confronting the Reality of the Lack of Candor Inside Organizations We need to build cultures where "opposing views are debated and more effective solutions and innovations are created." -- Lynn Harris

    1. The universal voice of mankind is always declaring that justice and virtue are honourable, but grievous and toilsome; and that the pleasures of vice and injustice are easy of attainment, and are only censured by law and opinion.

      This is Glaucon's primary argument in a sentence. He says that justice is not intrinsically good; it's merely a requirement for living in society. People don't want to be just. They need to be just according to law and to prevent people from hating them.

  12. Oct 2015
    1. This predicament, which is entirely unavoidable, refigures ethics as something beyond individual choice. Yes, I make decisions about who or what might enter my home, who or what has access to my Twitter feed, but this only happens in the face of an ever-present exposedness to others. Prior to the large-scale availability of networked computational devices, Levinas described the relation that defines networked life. Levinas likens this predicament to that of the hostage, and he suggests that if “we” as humans share anything at all, it is this experience of being held hostage by another that resists representation, that arrives over and beyond our attempts to make sense of that other.

      The basis for a networked ethics...the fact that we are all always and already connected to others.

  13. Sep 2015
    1. . Psychologists have thought about morality primarily as a system of rules that prevents people from hurting each other and taking their possessions. But I believe that morality is much richer and more balanced. Most people don’t want to rape, steal, and kill. What they really want is to live in a moral community where people treat each other well, and in which they can satisfy their needs for love, productive work, and a sense of belonging to groups of which they are proud. We get a visceral sense that we do not live in such a moral world when we see people behave in petty, cruel, or selfish ways. But when we see a stranger perform a simple act of kindness for another stranger, it gives us a thrilling sense that maybe we do live in such a world.
    1. We rely more on what we feel than what we think when solving moral dilemmas. It’s not that religion and culture don’t have a role to play, but the building blocks of morality clearly predate humanity. We recognize them in our primate relatives, with empathy being most conspicuous in the bonobo ape and reciprocity in the chimpanzee. Moral rules tell us when and how to apply our empathic tendencies, but the tendencies themselves have been in existence since time immemorial.
  14. Aug 2015
  15. Jun 2015
  16. Sep 2014
  17. Sep 2013
    1. Much as it is not the criminal defense lawyer's place to judge their client regardless of how guilty they are, it is not the doctor's place to force experimental treatment upon a patient regardless of how badly the research is needed, and it is not the priest's place to pass worldly judgement on their flock, it is not the programmer's place to try and decide whether the user is using the software in a "good" way or not.

      Taking this to heart / putting it on my wall.

    1. For they taught their art for a good purpose, to be used against enemies and evil-doers, in self-defence not in aggression, and others have perverted their instructions, and turned to a bad use their own strength and skill. But not on this account are the teachers bad, neither is the art in fault, or bad in itself; I should rather say that those who make a bad use of the art are to blame. And the same argument holds good of rhetoric; for the rhetorician can speak against all men and upon any subject,—in short, he can persuade the multitude better than any other man of anything which he pleases, but he should not therefore seek to defraud the physician or any other artist of his reputation merely because he has the power; he ought to use rhetoric fairly, as he would also use his athletic powers.

      Ethics of rhetoric.