Capturing the lively discussions, presentations, and other events that make up the daily activities of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.
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Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, discusses some of the data security and personal privacy implications of employees bringing their own devices into the workplace, in the most recent entry in the Center's video series Internet Ethics: Views from Silicon Valley.
Consumer and business data is increasingly moving to the "cloud," and people are clamoring for protection of that data. However, as Symantec's President, CEO, and Chairman of the Board Steve Bennett points out in this cliip, "maximum privacy" is really anonymity, and some people use anonymity as a shield for illegal and unethical behavior. How should cloud service providers deal with this dilemma?
Bennett's remarks are part of the video series, Internet Ethics: Views From Silicon Valley. Responding is Robert Henry, Chief Information Security Officer, Santa Clara University.
A.C. "Mike" Markkula Jr., for whom the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics is named, considers ways to minimize some of the harms associated with the Internet, while fully appreciating its benefits, in the latest installment of the Center's video series "Internet Ethics: Views from Silicon Valley."
Charles Geschke, co-founder of Adobe, asks who is responsible for accuracy in the online world in this video, part of the series, Internet Ethics: Views From Silicon Valley. Is it the user's responsibility to judge which sources to access on the Web, and how much to rely on them? Is it the publishers of information who have a duty to strive to be accurate?
Responding is Sally Lehrman,Knight Ridder/San Jose Mercury News Endowed Chair in Journalism and the Public Interest at Santa Clara University, and a Markkula Center for Applied Ethics Scholar. Join the conversation.
"Total interconnectedness," very cheap data storage, and powerful search technologies come together to create a new set of ethical questions. Do we have a right to access and correct the data in our profiles? Do we have a right to be "forgotten" by the Internet? In this brief video, part of the Center's series, "Internet Ethics: Views From Silicon Valley," Reputation.com co-founder Owen Tripp asks us to consider the impact of the Internet's long memory on those among us who are most vulnerable.
Evan Selinger--Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Rochester Institute of Technology--responds to Tripp's comments. Visit the vlog to join the conversation.
New technologies often bring both benefits and unintended consequences. The same is true of laws aimed at new technologies. In this brief clip from the Ethics Center's new video series, Internet Ethics: Views From Silicon Valley, NetApp's Executive Chairman Dan Warmenhoven discusses the development of GPS-tracking technology and the ethical issues associated with the aggregation of GPS data into large databases. He then argues that data protection efforts can go too far, leaving us with inefficient outcomes. How do we strike the right balance between benefits and harms?
Patrick Lin, associate professor of philosophy at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo responds. Visit the vlog to join the conversation
Silicon Valley pioneers and thought leaders discuss key ethical issues in the online world in a new video series from the Center's Internet Ethics Program. Over the course of ten weeks, founders of such companies as Apple, Adobe, and Reputation.com, as well as CEOs of Symantec and Seagate will be among the people offering their assessment of the ethical challenges represented by the Web.
The first video in the series is an introduction by Santa Clara University Associate Professor of Philosophy Shannon Vallor, who is currently working on a book called 21st Century Virtue: Toward an Ethical Framework for Living Well with Emerging Technologies. Vallor argues that the people who devise Internet tools and services should think not only about meeting the user's immediate desires and needs, but also about doing that in a way that promotes a good life.
You can subscribe to the series either by RSS or by email here.
Responding in the Huffington Post to a claim by the CTO of a large technology company that new sensor-enabled technologies will be like "your best friend," Center Internet Ethics Program Manager Irina Raicu writes:
The interview with the CTO taught me this: Technology will at best anticipate only some of your needs, and contextually-aware devices will not be like your best friend (unless you have some very strange and annoying friends). It also reminded me that making hyperbolic claims about technology serves to highlight the limitations of dreamed-of devices, rather than their strengths.
Join the debate on Instagram's privacy policy, which states, "You hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post. "
Students from Santa Clara University are engaged in a global dialog on this and other business ethics issues with students at Ateneo de Manila in the Philippines and Loyola Institute of Business Administration in India. You are invited to share your thought on this or the previous case on who was responsible for a terrible factory fire in Bangladesh.
Ben Adida, director of identity for Mozilla, Brian Kennish, co-founder of Disconnect, and Arvind Narayanan, assistant professor of computer science at Princeton University, visited the Santa Clara campus Jan. 23 to discuss an engineering ethics perspective on privacy by design. The approach means that concerns about customer privacy are part of the planning process for new products, rather than an afterthought, only addressed after concerns arise.
The panel, co-sponsored by the Ethics Center and the High Tech Law Institute, was moderated by Center Internet Ethics Program Manager Irina Raicu.
