Impact of Technology

Most GCSE Computer Science courses have a section on the ethical, legal, cultural and environmental impact of computers and their use. This page contains a list of examples that I share with my students for discussions of this topic, and which would be used when answering exam questions. The list is updated on a regular basis, and I don't bother with obvious issues, such as the use of paper.

Ethical Issues / Use of Personal Information

• How maths can get you locked up (NB.  That shouldn't happen here because of the Data Protection Act/GDPR)
• Your rights relating to decisions being made about you without human involvement
• The code I'm still ashamed of
• Convict-spotting algorithm criticised
• 'My life was ruined by a typo'
• BBC fools HSBC voice recognition security system
• Netflix spilled your Brokeback Mountain secret
• Burned to death because of a rumour on WhatsApp
• Taylor Swift used facial recognition software to detect stalkers at LA concert
• Crime prediction software 'adopted by 14 UK police forces'
• Fitness app exposes military bases
• Almost one-fifth of Britons 'do not use internet' (this is important because the people that don't use the internet are the people that could most benefit from using it.)
• Facial recognition: School ID checks lead to GDPR fine
• Social media influencers are promoting "knock off" goods
• 99.9% of hacked accounts don't use two-factor authentication
• Maths and tech specialists need Hippocratic oath
• Call centre staff to be monitored via webcam for home-working 'infractions'
• Why can't Google get a grip on "rip-off" ads?
• Parents of children called Alexa challenge Amazon
• Neighbour wins privacy row over smart doorbell and cameras
• Facebook shutting down facial recognition and deleting face scans of a billion users
• How cut-and-pasted programming is putting the internet and society at risk
• Europeans' data shared 376 times daily
• What is the quantum apocalypse and should we be scared?
• Apple AirTags - 'A perfect tool for stalking'
• The beginning of the end of the password
• Drivers in France ‘strongly advised’ to avoid dashboard cameras

Environmental Issues

NB.  I haven't included obvious issues, such as the use of paper and electricity.

• Is the worldwide web a waste of water?
• Why is it so hard to recycle or repair anything?
• Squirrel 'threat' to critical infrastructure
• Bitcoin energy use in Iceland set to overtake homes
• Music streaming has a worse carbon footprint than records and CDs
• Dirty streaming: The internet's big secret
• Grimes sells digital art collection for $6m (look at the energy use!)
• The Framework modular laptop
• University of Cambridge researchers use algae to power computer
• Building too tall for fibre internet
• What the are the greenest programming languages?
• A new concept for low-cost batteries
• Tiny data centre used to heat public swimming pool
• Self-driving car computers may be 'as bad' for emissions as datacenters
• AI chatbots guzzle enormous amounts of water, study finds

Censorship/Monitoring

• Kieran McGrath shooting: The killers undone by technology
• WhatsApp must be accessible to authorities, says Amber Rudd
• Geeks v government: The battle over public key cryptography
• Leaks 'expose peculiar Facebook moderation policy'
• The Iron Bubble (or: how the Facebook algorithm insulates fascists from reality)
• Facial recognition tech is arsenic in the water of democracy
• Britain could have Big Brother surveillance society worse than George Orwell's 1984
• "He used our smart doorbell camera to track me."
• Internet providers tracking sites we visit in secretive trial
• Richard Desmond in legal battle with Wikipedia over term "pornographer"
• Mobile phones are inherently insecure
• Saudi woman jailed for 45 years for social media posts
• Couple fined for driving in Bath bus lane - thanks to 'number plate' on woman's T-shirt

Offensive Communications

• Jack Monroe has won £24,000 in a libel action against Katie Hopkins

Computers in the Workplace

• Battling the 'brogrammers'
• Microsoft staff 'suffering from PTSD'
• Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?
• Computer Science's Gender Gap Will Take More Than A Century To Fix
• The Secret History of Women in Coding
• "I feel like I was accidentally hired"
• Post Office scandal: What the Horizon saga is all about - workers were imprisoned for theft/fraud because software was incorrectly calculating stock and takings
• "I'm happy to lose £10m by quitting Facebook," says Lush boss
• France sets minimum book delivery fee in anti-Amazon struggle

Artificial Intelligence

• 5 Things Everyone Should Know About Machine Learning And AI
• Go master quits because AI 'cannot be defeated'
• A robot wrote this entire article. Are you scared yet, human?
• AI 'outperforms' doctors diagnosing breast cancer
• OpenAI's state-of-the-art machine vision AI is fooled by handwritten notes
• Robots can be our partners
• "Yeah, we're spooked": AI starting to have big real-world impact, says expert
• AI tool accurately predicts tumour regrowth in cancer patients
• Lab-grown brain cells play video game Pong
• NYC education department blocks ChatGPT on school devices, networks
• Behind the scenes of TV's first deep fake comedy: "None of it is illegal. Everything is silly"
• Microsoft's new AI can simulate anyone's voice with 3 seconds of audio
• I thought I was immune to being fooled online. Then I saw the pope in a coat
• York student uses AI chatbot to get parking fine revoked
• ChatGPT banned in Italy over privacy concerns
• Photographer admits prize-winning image was AI-generated
• Google engineer warns it could lose out to open-source technology in AI race
• 3 in 4 workers say AI reduced productivity and increased workloads

Leisure Time and Home Life

• How streaming and Ed Sheeran ruined the charts forever
• The house that spied on its owner
• Video game use linked to worse GCSEs, study suggests
• Does my nose look big in this? Plastic surgeons reassure those worried by selfies
• I made my shed the top-rated restaurant on Trip Advisor
• Why social media is killing Christmas
• Screen time correlates with failure to meet developmental targets
• Excessive screen time is killing children's imaginations say nursery workers
• Giving Your Child a Smartphone is "Like Giving Them Drugs" Says Top Addiction Expert
• Social-media use 'disrupting teen sleep and exercise'
• How much do we learn from "educational" games?
• Was life better before the internet?
• What does tech take from us? Meet the writer who has counted 100 big losses
• Missing Girl Is Rescued After Using Hand Signal From TikTok
• Tesla drivers left unable to start their cars after outage
• DAB stations reminded to check their metadata
• Ceefax - a communications revolution
• Damaged cable leaves Shetland cut off from mainland
• "It's discrimination": millions of Britons frozen out in the digital age

Culture, Psychology and Misperception

• The Saudi teen arrested for flirting online
• A Darkly Comical Programming Error Shows the Human Assumptions Behind Code
• Share prices are about to overflow!
• Tesla suggests Autopilot not to blame for fatal crash (do systems get more dangerous as they get better because we take them for granted?)
• 'Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia
• Zoë Roth sells 'Disaster Girl' meme as NFT for $500,000
• Tricks that keep you hooked on your phone
• 'He was terrified of people': when gaming becomes an addiction
• NHS to launch first internet addiction clinic
• Are video games really addictive?
• "The Purity Spiral" - the moral storms raging on social media
• What does reading on screens do to our brains?
• Is internet addiction a growing problem?
• Twitter admits bias in algorithm for rightwing politicians and news outlets
• Meet the man who accidentally started an assassin hiring website