Well here I am. It’s been a long and hard struggle, but, I am still sick. In other news I have acquired myself a job. It is not a painstaking job, but it looks like it should help. Help because besides on the hour duties and basic maintenance jobs, I just sit and do my homework.
What is my job you ask? My job is that I am now THE LAB MONITOR!
I am very excited that I got it, and after I turned in the paperwork yesterday, I went and bought myself a Cal Poly milkshake. It was delicious. But now that I have a job, a thought that had been lingering in the back of my mind since I started college really hit home.
You see this applies more to Computer Science students then it does others but basically now that I am in college I am both ethically and legally responsible for everything I do. This might seem very reasonable to someone who has been working in the industry for years, but to kids growing up in the current information age, not stepping over the line is very difficult.
What makes avoiding this line even harder is that it isn’t really a line, but more of a grey area comprised of various blurred lines, and each blurred line is a different expectation from a different set of people, whether they are your peers, your customers, the government, your family members, or just your own morals. So for everything I do, I must consult the little road map of lines to decide what my action will cause.
Why does this apply more to computer science then it does elsewhere? Let me explain. You see, everything I learn in class is a tool. The example one of my professors gave was that pretend that he is my father. My father likes to hunt and wants to show me how to properly use a firearm (they are not weapons, just firearms :p). So he shows me how to shoot things, clean the gun, load the gun, and store the gun. Now as a parent, should he stop there? No, right? What most parents then would continue on doing is to then teach the morals behind the tool. So in the firearm scenario, He would tell me what to shot, how not to hurt people and why guns can be bad.
The same is true for programming. You see in my classes I am not learning how to use the tool, I am learning when and for what purpose to use the tools. Learning to program is easy, you just read the book and go from there, it’s learning how not to use the software I write illegally that is what we need to be taught.
So when I decide that I want to watch the new superman movie, but can’t afford to buy it, I need to think whether or not tunneling through a firewall and downloading the movie is worth the A) punishment and B) the grief it will cause me and my fellow roommates when they cut off the internet. This of course is an extreme case, but none the less something I need to think about.
Never forget the totally abused Spiderman quote, “With great power, comes great responsibility.”
Hasta.