Question

what are the differences between ethical issues and social issues in the information technology professional industry

Answer 1

Our society is rapidly developing by utilising various technologies which evolve day by day making the life easier and more comfortable.The technology is harnessed through information and knowledge that makes the evolution of various technologies and new innovations on the go.Today, the IT revolution has reached every corner of the world making the technology and information as a part of our daily life which resulted in the development of the IT industry being a lion's share in the world markets.The sophisticated technologies like Large Scale Computing,Big data,AI,IoT,Cellular telephony have led to fastest evolution of the Information Technology in the last decade.Directly or indirectly, the IT industry takes its role in each and every industry and the society.

Due to the day by day increase in the number of users and the sectors that rely on the information technology , there's a need of dealing with the ethical and social issues and the limitations that are needed to be focussed so that the technology should not have a negative impact on the society.As ithe internet is growing, its capability to store and exchange the large amount of data of various users across the world is increased, in which there's a chance of personal data abuse and privacy violation may occur .In such cases the relibility of Inforamtion technology gets degraded.Another major threat to inforamtion technology industry is piracy and violation of copyright acts.Most of the users tend to download the information from the internet which was illegally distributed such as pirated software,pirated multimedia and unethical websites that endangers the users to unconditional violence,inappropriate sexual behaviour,changes in psychological traits etc.,

The following are the vvarious challenges being faced by the IT industry:

• Copyright violation and distribution of pirated data
• Privacy violation
• Negative impact on behaviour of users due to addiction to social networks and other websites
• Spreading false news and gossips
• verbal attacks,racism and hate sppech
• Data misuse / unsolicited manipulation and hacking
• violent computer games , online gambling and illegal online businesses

A professional is someone who belong to a professional body and obeys the regualtions that the professional body bounds to. For computer preofessionals ,The Association of Computing Machinery is the professional body which governs and maintains the standards and policies for the industries that rely on information technology and creates the code of conduct and standards for professionals. The professionals who work for the IT insutry needs to observe various ethical and social considerations so as to ensure that he must no be a direct or an indirect cause of various issues that are discussed above.

Ethical issues:

The ethical issues deal with deciding what is right and what is wrong that directly or indorectly impact an individual or a group of individuals.The person or an organisation who offers an IT based product or service should hold a responsibilty to assure when something goes wrong or when the data of the users prone to misuse while using the product or the service.

Also the ethical issues deal with the actions that are needed to be taken if any loss or damage to an individual or to the property happens.

Risks and threats that are considered in ethical issues

• Privacy
• Security
• Safety

Social issues:

The social issues are the factors that directly or indirectly imapact the whole society that includes himself and the organisation he work for.the folowing are varoius issues a professional needs to deal with:

To follow eco friendly practices

• conserving the power
• recycling e-waste
• optimising the computing with efficient devices and and technologies like virtualisation that has less hardware utilisation

To folow healthy interpersonal relationships

• Good communication with colleagues and clients for the personal good will
• Effective leadership and team working capabilities for growth of the organisation
• Promoting and helping others to be a part of IT industry therby helping the growth of the industry