Ethical aspects of informatics

Not all rules regulating activity in the sphere of informatics can be known as rules of law. A lot of things are defined by observance of unwritten rules of behavior for those who are involved in the world of computers. However, in this regard the informatics doesn't differ at all from any other field of activity of the person in society.

As well as in any other big and branched-out sphere of human activity, in informatics there were certain moral ethical standards of behavior and activity.

Moral ethical standards in the environment software designer differ from ethics of an everyday life by little bigger openness and altruism. The majorities of present experts-informatics were created and acquired the knowledge and qualification thanks to disinterested consultations and assistance of other experts. It is obvious; therefore they are ready to render disinterested aid, to give advice or consultation, to provide the computer for performance of any manipulations with diskettes etc. A striking example of the psychological atmosphere in the environment software designer is an extending international movement of the programmers providing software created by them for free distribution.

These are positive aspects, but there are also negative ones. Let's pay attention to the language software designer. The slang software designer is constructed on the English-speaking terms distorted under our pronunciation and the abbreviations entered by foreign firms – developers of computers and the software in technical documentation. The slang words borrowed from Russian-Kazakh on the basis of analogies and associations on similarity and contiguity are formed. We have to reconcile with the fact that many special terms came to us from the USA. Nobody won't pass today from the term «printer» to similar «the automatic digital printer» (which was used not too long ago). The relative brevity makes influence on the use of similar words in domestic literature.

Ethical problems acquire a special sharpness in the process of operation in the wide area telecommunication networks. To open protection of another’s database – a criminal offense. And whether is it possible to afford obscene expressions or their transparent euphemisms? Commercial advertising in a noncommercial teleconference? The decent person won’t allow himself to do it in spite of the fact if the punishment is provided for it by the law or not.

Ethics – system of norms of moral behavior of the person. The decent person won't read contents of the diskette forgotten by the neighbor on a workplace, not because it threatens it with punishment but because it is an immoral act; he won't copy the program because of the absence of her master not because he can be brought to an action, but because these act will be condemned by his colleagues. Every time, when the person is going to make a doubtful act in the sphere of professional activity, he will reflect whether it meets the ethical standards developed in professional community.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1642