Project 1: Reflection on Portrait & Manifesto

We tried a something a little different since half of our group members are EE’s and half of our group members are in CSE. We wanted to write the Portrait and the Manifesto for both of our areas of studies and then have them dialogue with each other on the same page. I think it is interesting to see what similarities and differences arise from the two, and how it shows more about each Manifesto/Portrait because you can contrast the two. You can find the link to our project here.

I only plan to reflect on the EE half of the Portrait and Manifesto since they are what I can most easily attribute to my time at ND. It does not make sense to see if I fit a Manifesto/Portrait that doesn’t even encompass me as a student. I will reflect to the questions below:

• How much does the Manifesto reflect your individual feelings and thoughts? Is it a warcry? What is it?

I really do not think this Manifesto actually reflects my individual feelings and thoughts. First of all it is written in a male perspective, and I am female. I do not struggle socially and I have a lot of other interests outside of being that squeaky-clean engineer that wants to be so smart and create so much that they rule the world one day. I think it really is a warcry against the kids that they feel oppressed by or looked down upon. Its something that screams against the oppression this “typical engineer” might face.

• How much do you identify with the Portrait? Where do you differ?

I think the portrait fits me better because it was made to be tailored to the group of Notre Dame EEs, which I clearly fall under. It encompasses most of us, but it is also still pretty broad. I don’t feel like I was inaccurately described, but I also don’t feel like I was accurately described either. I feel like I could fall under this random bracket of engineers, but if one of my friends picked this Portrait off of the street they would absolutely never pick me as a person that this Portrait describes. Because of this, I cannot see myself identifying with this Portrait.

• How significant are stereotypes to how you view the world and how the world views you? Do you think the presence of a Manifesto or Portrait is helpful or harmful?

I care about different stereotypes for different things. I think issues like people stereotyping me for being a female more frustrating and significant than the issue of people stereotyping me as an engineer. I guess I don’t really mind people stereotyping me for something I chose, because I can just choose to be different from that stereotype. However, things that are innate to who I am that I did not choose, like my gender, I find more impactful on how the world views me.

I don’t really think its a good idea to ever write a Manifesto or Portrait for a group of people. I think it would be fine to write one for just yourself, but any time you write something that is descriptive and general for a population, you will always leave out at least one or a few people. In the end, writing a Manifesto or Portrait for a group is more harmful than helpful; this will leave people out, make a group feel left out or just change a publics opinion about a group that not all the individuals in the group agree with. I do think writing a Manifesto of Portrait for oneself could be helpful though. It could give purpose and a voice to someone that wants to be heard or could give more focus and purpose to an individual.

Post 4: Mobility and Company Loyalty

I don’t know if I can answer the question on my personal mobility with regards to companies. I never thought of switching companies as an employment strategy or a means to getting a salary raise. I always approach the hiring and career path as trying to find a job, seeing how you like it and possibly switching if you find that the company you are working for is not a good fit. I don’t see switching companies as a way to get a better pay, I am looking for a job at a company that I find is valuable and fulfills me.

I think that these articles leave my thoughts at the uncomfortable extremes; extremes where you must constantly be switching companies or where you can’t because of non-compete agreements. I think non-compete companies are very undesirable and often times crippling for employees since it does not allow mobility between jobs.

In the article about how companies kill their employees job searches it says:

Now Congress is about to go further, giving employers new powers to sue employees under federal law. But many economists and legal scholars are against it, armed with ample evidence showing that such a law would reduce innovation and an employee’s incentive to learn.

Which poses a huge threat to employees who are looking for new jobs. The article then continues on and gives examples of people who were not able to take new jobs or had to have months off that were unpaid because of these agreements. I see how this can be crippling for those that are genuinely looking for a new job or need a new job.

I also see why it is important to retain employees. If all employees just left after a few years, then there would be no consistency in the company and the prices for training and headhunting would add up tremendously. I think the article about Employees who stay that learn 50% less actually make a good point on why you should stay.

Brendan Burke, Director at Headwaters HW +0.00% MB, strongly disagrees with the “up-and-out culture.”  He explains that “companies turn over great employees because they’re not organizationally strong enough to support rapid development within their ranks. In many cases, that is a recipe for discontinuity in service and product offerings as well as disloyalty in the ranks. As such, we take the opposite approach. Rather than force folks out after 24 months, we try to retain our junior and mid-level staff and develop them within the ranks.”

Yes, I understand that you will make more money if you move around companies a lot, but the issue I am debating is whether or not that is ethical. After all, there are a lot of things that give you a fat paycheck that aren’t exactly ethical. I see this divide between company loyalty and self improvement as moral divide between what should come first; you or the company. If a company has to be constantly hiring new people at higher salaries, will that company survive? Either way, should that be more important to you than your overall salary or supposed skills?

I don’t necessarily know the answer to all of my questions. I just know that I see how it is valuable to switch companies often, but I don’t completely see it as moral. I see it as self-motivated. I know that Silicon Valley has really flourished from this “up-and-out culture” but I wonder how that effects the ethos of the employees involved in that way. I do not intend to sway either for or against the current state of mobility, I am just wondering how this trend will change and have different effects in the near and far future.

Post 3: What is a hacker?

I really liked the first article, The Conscience of a Hacker, that we read because it was truthful and poetic. I think a lot of times teenagers and young adults get shut down and not academically challenged if they have interests outside of the traditional math, science, english and history disciplines. It goes back to the idea that the hacking field is not something with a lot of qualified educators in it. Because of that, I think hackers are misunderstood. There is a misconception that hacking isn’t academic or educational, when in fact it is key in the development of a well-experienced programmer.

The second article, Hackers and Painters, helped me understand the distinction between hackers and the other disciplines such as art. It showed me that hackers and painters are similar that they are creative and expressive. It shows how it really cannot be grouped into something like computer science or engineering. Really, a lot of math is actually really irrelevant to hackers as said below:

If hackers identified with other makers, like writers and painters, they wouldn’t feel tempted to do this. Writers and painters don’t suffer from math envy. They feel as if they’re doing something completely unrelated. So are hackers, I think.

If Notre Dame really wanted to explore further into the field, they would completely take the computer science major out of the college of engineering and make a computer based school within the university. That way, people could learn more purposefully and focused material such as having majors like hacking, software development, etc.

I was also amazed by the hacking mindset on how you can start off by being original and creative. With traditional science and engineering, it is more likely that we are repeating previous experiments and memorizing known discoveries and phenomenon. With hacking, it is a more comprehensive learning where it actually develops a students creative and problem solving skills. I liked how they word it below:

The fact that hackers learn to hack by doing it is another sign of how different hacking is from the sciences. Scientists don’t learn science by doing it, but by doing labs and problem sets. Scientists start out doing work that’s perfect, in the sense that they’re just trying to reproduce work someone else has already done for them. Eventually, they get to the point where they can do original work. Whereas hackers, from the start, are doing original work; it’s just very bad. So hackers start original, and get good, and scientists start good, and get original.

The hacker archetype is interesting because it can take a lot of different forms. It was said in How yuppies hacked the original hacker ethos:

I was attracted to the hacker archetype because, unlike the straightforward activist who defines himself in direct opposition to existing systems, hackers work obliquely. The hacker is ambiguous, specialising in deviance from established boundaries, including ideological battle lines. It’s a trickster spirit, subversive and hard to pin down. And, arguably, rather than aiming towards some specific reformist end, the hacker spirit is a ‘way of being’, an attitude towards the world.

I think that this is a good example of how being a hacker is a way of thought and a way of being, not necessarily a profession or a job to get a quick rise to the top in Silicon Valley. I look at it more as a spirit of discovery and getting through or around difficult challenges.

Something that I definitely see is that being a hacker is not conventional and in that way, very much a proponent of counterculture. A lot of hackers are similar in that they do not follow the mainstream, but I did not like A Portrait of J. Random Hacker because it suggested that only these people could be hackers and that every hacker is the same. I have a hard time believing that all hackers prefer cats over dogs and that they don’t play any sports unless its friendly. I agree that there is a large stereotype that hackers fit this profile, but there are many people that I consider hackers that do not fit this profile whatsoever. I understand that it is written satirically with the intention of truthful undertones so I see why it is written, but would like to challenge it as the complete profile of a hacker. I definitely do not identify with these attributes but I also don’t identify myself as a hacker. So I can’t personally comment on the validity of the statements and archetype. I think if I considered myself more skilled in computer science I would be discouraged at this idea of a hacker since I would not fall into it very well. I think also the hacker archetype leans heavily towards the male end and did not appreciate the idea that ‘female hackers wear nearly no visible makeup or none at all.’ I don’t think female hackers should just be assumed to fit this criteria because already it seems undesirable and makes me not want to consider myself a hacker.

Post 2.1: Is programming a super-power? Why or why not? What are the implications if it is?

After reading the new articles for this week, I only now realized that the blog posts are required to be 500-1000. Stupidly, my eyes skipped over the only bolded words in the prompt so I will supplement my post from last week by adding another response in attempt to fix my accidental underachievement.

I was intrigued by the videos and conversations in class that surrounded the idea of whether or not programming is a super-power. I was surprised how many people had opposition to the idea that it is a super power, since anyone can learn it. People generally agreed that it had great responsibility and great power, but it was not a super-power. I would have to beg to differ on that statement because I believe just because anyone can learn it, it doesn’t detract from the qualification of a super-power. I think pop-culture has a mix of what super powers are, and with Iron Man, we can see that not all super-powers are God-given but instead learned and judged based on the magnitude of the impact.

I think programming is a super-power because anyone who has this skill can make a very far-fetching and immediate impact on the world. I think this is different than other learned or innate skills since being bilingual or a hardware wiz or a talented poet could not as rapidly create as much change as a programmer can. Programmers have direct connections to every market and social aspect of life. You can take Uber for example; programming is the super-power that enabled the complete and far-spread shift in the transportation industry.

Obviously, since I am considering programming as a super-power, I think there are a lot of implications from this. All super-heros have a very strong and important place in society. Being a super-hero is having a civic duty to keep people safe from villains. In that way, I believe programmers have a strong civic duty to do the right thing with their programming skills and even further than that, not to just do something neutral. I think programmers must use their own unique super powers in order to work on something to better society.

I know there are many different opinions on this, and it is difficult to say since I am not actually a programmer myself. Instead I look at my electrical engineering skills with similar motivations; to look upon my work with the intention for it to go to good. I think the difference between what programmers do, and what I do is the fact that any programmer can have an extreme and immediate impact on others based off of that work. I also think working as an electrical engineer is equally valuable but it is really not anyone who has the access and ability to make the same magnitude and depth of impact as a programmer can. In that way, I really believe that being a programmer leaves a larger margin of ‘evil’ that a programmer or a computer scientist might easily fall into. I think this understanding is even reflected in our course requirements to get a degree from Notre Dame. As an electrical engineer I am not required to take this class, instead I am taking it for my technical elective since I think having relevant ethical discussion is fundamental to what I personally consider a college education. I know this is a mandatory class for computer science majors since there is more opportunity and availability for a computer science major who graduates from Notre Dame to fall into ‘the dark side.’ That is why I think that programming is distinctly different from other skills and talents since it has more of the availability to use the powers for bad.

Post 2: Why Study Ethics in Computer Science/Engineering

There are many reasons why it is important to study ethics in computer science and engineering. Taking the Parable of Talents, it shows us that God gives gifts with the intention of service. So when God had given the servants all the large sums of money, he was unpleased when the servant did nothing with it but bury it. What I take away from that is that, with all great gifts, they must be used wisely and toward a good cause. That is why ethics is important to study in Computer Science/Engineering. Both these disciplines have major impacts on the modern world today. If a computer scientist only uses the gift for him or herself, then the gift is squandered.

Also, Computer Science and Engineering is very far-reaching in our world today. As seen in the article “Why Software is Eating the World,” new software and technology literally breaches every single aspect of industry today. Whether it is Amazon taking away the need for bookstores, or online shopping taking away the need for department stores, software is changing the landscape of our economy. It is important to study ethics to understand what implications certain computer science of engineering advancements could have on other people, industries and economies.

Post 1: Short Introduction

 My name is Annie Conover, and I am a junior Electrical Engineering major. I am interested in international development and social/environmental concerns especially in regards to solar photovoltaics and electric/hybrid vehicle systems. I spent the past summer in Uganda and the past semester in Ireland so I am newly returning to the States now. Last year I took a course on Technology, Society and Ethics which I really enjoyed so I thought that this course would build upon the topics I learned in that class.

In my opinion, the most pressing current ethical issue facing computer scientists is the issue of surveillance and data mining. I think there are a lot of other issues that will become very pressing shortly, but right now I think that there must be more effort put towards the issue of privacy.