Looking for perspectives about the above. On my meanderings around the web I’ve found cybersecurity is all the rage now, cybersecurity experts are desperately needed. Looks a bit like a protection scheme to me - first have everyone save their data in the cloud and buy a smart fridge, then flood everything with ethical hacking courses and cybersecurity certifications.
Reminds me of my marketing translation days working on copy where you always were supposed to outpace your competitors by using some [insert software here]-as-a-service solution to ‘compete in an increasingly fast-paced business environment’. Yay rat race.
On the other hand, as to cybersecurity experts, we will need smart people who can re-stupidify our smart appliances when they go rogue.
What would you consider ethical work within IT? Now and in a brighter future?
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For IoT stuff I think graceful degradation software is needed. Linking to the cloud needs to be optional and not a necessary and functionality breaking feature. Same for the dependency on apps to control IoT stuff, that often goes hand in hand with it.
Graceful degradation sounds nice. Is that the proper term for “re-stupidifying” smart appliances? Where would I start if I wanted to learn how to exorcise a printer and make it accept non-brand cartridges and connect only to LAN? I did some 3d printer stuff years ago, I guess real printers (and possibly other appliances) are somewhat the same?
No, it is more about keeping partial functionality when things break or become unavailable.
One could argue that the printer’s unavailability due to its unwillingness to eat common cartridge is a sign that it’s broken 😅
Do work to:
Decrease: electricity usage, user tracking, dark patterns, walled gardens, data hording, harassment/abuse, rage bait and conflict
Increase: privacy, security, openness including open source, user control, decentralization
I’m not in the security area, but I can understand why it’s all the rage at the moment. We are replacing legacy applications that were built with zero security oversight, and were built in the last 10 years. Externally facing web applications that are running on servers that have never had security updates after the original vendor left, are running software that is many versions behind with known security exploits, and where no one ever considered what might happen if someone decided to trick the system with multiple accounts, or by submitting something 1000 times with a bot.
Security is probably all the rage because there’s a lot of catching up to do.
And I feel like the type of role you have in IT isn’t the important part of being ethical. I feel it’s the place you work that determines if your job is ethical or not.
Everything from doing taxes to registering your car to all sorts of civil stuff can be done online here, also every public website runs you through a half-hour captcha marathon, and most sites are old and really strange. I’m always torn between cheering the system on as it crumbles, and help making it work again.
