5.1

Three beneficial/harmful effects of CS:

  1. Increased Productivity and Efficiency: On one hand, computer science has revolutionized the way we live and work by providing faster and more efficient tools for communication, data processing, and problem solving. On the other hand, it has also led to job automation and the elimination of many manual labor jobs, resulting in a decrease in employment opportunities.

  2. Improved Education and Access to Information: The internet and computer technology have greatly expanded the access to educational resources and information, allowing people to learn and grow in ways that were once impossible. However, this has also contributed to the spread of false and misleading information, as well as increased distractions and decreased focus and attention spans.

  3. Greater Connectivity and Globalization: The rise of computer technology has allowed people to connect and communicate in ways that were once impossible, bridging geographical and cultural divides. This has resulted in greater collaboration and understanding between different communities, but it has also contributed to the spread of hate speech, cyber-bullying, and a decline in personal interactions and face-to-face communication.

Benefits of our project:

  • Entertaining for the user if they are bored
  • It’s a good way to spend time with friends or family and have fun together
  • It’s a learning experience for everyone involved

Potential con of our project:

  • It may be slightly buggy (it was developed by high schoolers)

Dopamine issues:

Modern technology has led to a lot more issues of people, especially teens, being desensitized to dopamine. This is why dopamine detox lifestyles are common in people who want to better themselves. Nowadays things like social media provide people with dopamine with the simple action of a scroll from one 15 second video to another. This is also one reason why the attention span of people has decreased to under 10 seconds. To combat this, content creators have adapted their products to amuse the viewer within those 10 seconds, giving the viewer a boost of dopamine that otherwise would not have happened. These continuous boosts of dopamine pose a problem with the desensitization of dopamine among teens and may explain the increased rates of depression and anxiety in Gen Z kids. I personally would say that I spend an extended amount of time on social media. Although this has not affected my personal study and success in High School at all (as I’ve earned a 4.00 unweighted GPA, have a good social life, and am invested in hobbies such as music and cars), I still believe I should consider decreasing my cell-phone use in general.

5.2

Steps to digital empowerment:

  1. Develop digital literacy skills: Learn how to use technology effectively and safely, including online privacy and security.
  2. Build a strong online presence: Develop a personal brand and create a professional profile on social media platforms.
  3. Protect personal data: Secure passwords, limit personal information shared online, and be aware of potential scams.
  4. Stay informed: Stay updated with the latest technology trends and advancements to be able to make informed decisions.
  5. Network and collaborate: Connect with like-minded people and build a professional network.
  6. Continuously learn and adapt: Stay curious and open to learning new skills and technologies to stay ahead in a constantly evolving digital world.

As I would consider myself relatively digitally empowered, some ways I can help someone who is not empowered include:

  1. Showing them how to do something they need to do (step by step)
  2. Giving rules of thumb here and there
  3. Helping them set up their technology and tools for how they will use them.

Paper and red tape can act as barriers to digital empowerment, as they can slow down processes and limit access to information. These traditional systems can be time-consuming and bureaucratic, making it difficult for individuals to access resources or services. By digitizing information and processes, governments, organizations, and individuals can reduce the burden of paper and red tape, making it easier for individuals to access information and services, which in turn can promote digital empowerment. An example of something like this at Del Norte is the list of sites that PUSD admin decide to block on school wifi. I do understand that some sites should be blocked, like those that contain NSFW content or are known for privacy issues. However, in the time I’ve taken this Computer Science course, I’ve had to bypass the school wifi restrictions multiple times with a VPN or hotspot just to access something that I actually need in order to succeed in the class, which is definitely a problem.

5.3

Intentional or Purposeful bias (Crossover Group Up, 10 minutes)

  1. 25-34 y/o average user age on Facebook. 10-19 y/o average user on TikTok. I think that there is exclusion between the platforms but that is mostly due to a generation gap. I don’t think it’s very harmful at all because it’s a natural divide. It definitely is good business because each individual company caters to their target audience
  2. Virtual assistants have female voices because it’s more pleasing to hear and easier to understand. It may also be connected to the submissive nature of virtual assistants. I think it’s a little harmful because it promotes bias that women are viewed as assistants and can be corrected by assigning a gender neutral voice. It is good business though, because it caters to most humans’s preferences.
  3. One algorithm that influences a lot of people’s lives is the TikTok algorithm. There are many trends that spread because of it, which influences real world actions. This can be both harmful and beneficial. Companies like Instagram and Facebook will feed you content that will keep you on their site longer, which would make them more ad revenue.

Pair work (Video on HP computers are racist)

Q1: Does the owner of the computer think this was intentional? A1: It’s hard to tell, but he seems to be jokingly upset at the computer for not recognizing him for his skin color.

Q2: How do you think this happened? A2: I think it was because of the bad lighting in the video. Additionally, the face recognition program may have been trained on people with lighter skin.

Q3: Is this harmful? Was it intended to be harmful or exclude? A3: Yes, it is harmful because it excludes a large group of people. I don’t think it was intended to be harmful because that would be bad business.

Q4: Should it be corrected? A4: Yes.

Q5: What would you or should you do to produce a better outcome? A5: Train the facial recognition program with darker skin color.

Summary

What is computing bias? Computing bias are flaws in a computer algorithm or program where it unjustly favors one input or demographic rather than another. This could be intentional or unintentional. One example of computing bias is HP’s facial recognition program, and how it works better with lighter-skinned people. This is most likely a result of the lack of training with people of darker skin tones.

5.4

Group work ~10 min

List of API’s we’ve used:

  • Car API
  • Wikipedia API
  • Medical symptoms API
  • Flashcards API

Biggest discovery in Github would be the github.dev viewer. It lets you view any raw file in github.

The top 10 or 20 datasets on kaggle are pretty random, but relevant to social trends.

Hacks

  • A good crowdsourcing method for CSP students would most likely take advantage of Slack features, such as the emoji reactions. This can be used to receive feedback from the students that are in the Slack channel.
  • Del Norte crowdsourcing could be done through instagram polls, since most students have an instagram account and are accessible on that platform. Crowdsourcing would definitely be beneficial for our project because it is all about the user experience, so we could have groups of people test certain features and provide feedback through a poll.
  • We could collect general ratings from 1-10 of our site at N@MT, which could tell us more about the popularity and execution of our idea.

5.5

Reflection

  1. When creating a repository in GitHub, you are given many different options for license types, including GNU GPL v3.0, MIT License, Apache License 2.0, and GNU GPL v2.0. All these licenses call for your repository to remain an open source of code, which different requirements for people using your code. For example, MIT License states that the owner’s software may be used, modified, and distributed by other people with credit given to the owner, completely for free. This will most likely be the most common license for this class, as it allows you to do whatever you want as long as you include the original copyright and license notice in any copy of the software/source.
  2. I learned that licensing is pretty complicated and there are many different options depending on how private the owner of the software wants it to be. Digital rights are also important because they allow for an agreement between companies and consumers online, such as social media platforms and music streaming platforms and distributors.
  3. My personal blog already came with an Apache License v2 when I cloned it from the template. For our group frontend repo, we have a MIT License because we want to let anyone use our code, just give credit to us and acknowledge the license. Same for our backend repo as well. In order to update or add a license, we needed to create a file called LICENSE and use the MIT License template in GitHub. We entered the copyright year as 2023 under the name TripleAJ. Both repos are now licensed with an MIT License.

5.6

Reflection

  1. In CSP, we’ve had to sign up on Slack, which we signed in using Google, therefore Slack has access to PII that is stored in personal Google account. As for our group project, we will be collecting only a user’s full name in order for it to be displayed on the leaderboard. Other information that will be collected includes a uid, password, and number of tokens. No emails or personal info will be collected.
  2. I’ve been taught to be very cautious with PII online as my dad is a software engineer for HP and he knows the risks of personal exposure online. For this reason, I’ve been pretty secretive about my identity online and choose not to enter personal information or customize accounts if given the option.
  3. A good password could be based off of an inside joke or second language that you speak, whereas a bad password is something like a common phrase or series of characters that is easy to guess. Another step that is used to assist in authentication is 2FA, which is highly secure as it requires your account info to be accurate. How it works is it will send a code to the email or phone number that is linked to your account and you must tell it that code in order to authenticate that it’s really you who is trying to access your account.
  4. Symmetric encryption is when a single string of characters is scrambled/encrypted in one step and can be decrypted in one step. Asymmetric encryption is when information is encrypted using both a public and private key. This is how the deploy and security keys are set up in my fastpages repository.
  5. In AWS, we used symmetric encryption when we created the instance
  6. I don’t recall an instance where I’ve been a victim of a phishing attack, but I am aware that one of the most common techniques is through email. A phisher will try to make themselves seem like they’re part of an organization to disguise their scam.