Spiders and Cookies Go... Hand in Hand?
12 May 2022What am I Doing?
At the beginning of this semester, I had no idea what I had signed up for by taking ICS 314. Once I heard that we were to create a website that would be used by people in the community, every expectation I had for this class immediately disappeared. What am I going to do in this class? What am I going to learn throughout the semester? Well, now that I’ve lugged through this class, I can now answer these questions. One thing that I’ve learned is that sometimes, doing things for justice doesn’t always mean it’s the correct and ethical choice. And I’ve learned that the user interface framework is part of the foundation of an entire website.
Chocolate Cookies? No Thank You
As messed up as it sounds, I never really realized how ethics is such a big deal in computer science, especially in software engineering. However, the first thing that pops up in my head when I think about ethics in software engineering are cookies. I remember seeing a video about what cookies are, what role they serve, and what happens when you click “Accept Cookies” on the websites you visit. They basically plant something like a chip and it allows them to see what kind of websites you go to. And I’ve noticed that recently, a lot of new apps that I download from the app store ALWAYS ask me to give them permission to track activity outside the app. I’ve started to think, “do the companies that run these websites really need this type of information from me? What purpose does this tracking serve? I think it’s kind of an invasion of my privacy.” I’ve never seen that type of popup before. And on the last day of classes, we did an activity where my group was, unfortunately, to defend the argument that working at the face recognition company was ethical. For our argument, we stated that as long as we achieve something for the greater good, then we don’t need written or verbal consent from the people whose information we used. On the other side, they stated that face recognition algorithms will almost certaintly select someone as a target if they are a woman, a person of color, a elderly person, or a younger person. This is because the pool of faces they are given are based around white middle aged men. This does not even represent half of the citizens that live in the United States of America. Also, it’s unethical to use someone’s information, especially a picture of their face, without their consent. With the recent Black Lives Matter movement, a lot of people are starting to develop distrust with law enforcement. There are many examples of how police officers grasp for any straw to harrass people of color for nonharmful crimes or falsely accusing them by using the technology that they have.This includes face recognition software. It really puts into question how law enforcement and companies really use information they obtain from the people. Are they using the information with malicious intent? Are they using the information for the greater good and safety of the common people? As someone hoping to pursue a career in software engineering, I hope me and my peers are able to do something about the cloud of mystery surrounding the use of sensitive information. Maybe, one day there will be an ethical facial recognition software that won’t be invasive or biased.
A Spiderweb of Information
To be completely honest, I had no idea what went into creating user interface frameworks. User interface frameworks include things called collections that have different characteristics. For example, in the Manoa Organization Database code, the final project I worked on, our framework included collections for users which included email, first name, last name, interests, and clubs they are in. We also have another collection for clubs that includes members, interests, and club admins. On top of that, there are interaction collections that act as a bridge between two collections. In a sense, the user interface framework is like a spiderweb of information. There are many different points in the spiderweb that are connected by strings connected to other points in the spiderweb. Now that me and my group have experience in frameworks, I’m curious to see what user interface frameworks look like for bigger websites like Google. There must be millions of things that software engineers at Google have to worry about. There’s user information which includes username, password, email, backup email, and address if the person feels comfortable putting that in. There’s also subscriptions, documents in Google Docs, Slides, and even in Google drive. The list continues. I wonder how messy their spiderweb of collections is.
Looking Onward
This class opened a door to a whole new side of the computer science world. This class genuinely piqued my interest in software engineering, and I enjoyed the WODs and homeworks (when I wasn’t being piled with assignments from all of my classes). I hope I’m able to get my hands wet with more software engineering experiences.