What Big Data Needs: A Code of Ethical Practices. In this era of Big Data, there is little that cannot be tracked in our online lives—or even in our offline lives. Consider one new Silicon Valley venture, called Color: it aims to make use of GPS devices in mobile phones, combined with built-in gyroscopes and accelerometers, to parse streams of photos that users take and thus pinpoint their locations. By watching as these users share photos and analyzing aspects of the pictures, as well as ambient sounds picked up by the microphone in each handset, Color aims to show not only where they are, but also whom they are with. While this kind of service might prove attractive to customers interested in tapping into mobile social networks, it also could creep out even ardent technophiles. Color illustrates a stark reality: companies are steadily gaining new ways to capture information about us.
For all the privacy concerns, the online economy creates enormous value by using customer information. Digital Divide. Reserving User Names to Protect Trademarks on Social Networks. "DIGITAL ETHICS IN BRIDGING DIGITAL DIVID" by Subhajit Basu. Subhajit Basu, Queen's University Belfast Abstract The digital divide disempowers, discriminates, and generates dependency. The question is how to deal with the problem of the digital divide? The politically intriguing idea of implementing a generic and adoptable model for ‘bridging digital divide’ clashes with the understanding that each country and region has its own peculiarities, constitution, and legal and political framework. The idea is simply unrealistic. It is not a matter of imposing legislative measures, strict regulations or empowering some controlling organization. One of the objectives at the World Summit on the Information Society was to build a global consensus around a core ethical values and principles for information society.
ICT has already posed fundamental ethical problems, whose complexity and global dimensions are rapidly evolving. Investment in ICT will not produce growth in developing countries unless it is supported by complementary policies. Suggested Citation.