Technology

While they show promise, safety-based navigational apps also create significant ethical problems.

Should video game developers mandate what kind of characters players can use?

Even facing shutdown, social media sites have a responsibility to help preserve our online memories.

The development of "killer robots" stands to change the way we think about warfare.

This post was written by Ayo Animashaun, a 2014 graduate of DePauw University. Ayo was an Economics major, Management Fellow, and Bonner Scholar. This article details his post-grad experience integrating sustainability and business with Earthships Biotecture Academy as well as his ambitions to bring the Earthship model to his home country of Ghana. Graduating presented me with the … Continue reading "Discovering Biotecture: What are Earthships and Why Should We Care?"

“Apps track users once every three minutes, “ Emily Dwoskin reports in The Wall Street Journal. Personally, this was a shocking, and quite alarming statistic considering how many apps I currently have on my phone. To make matters worse, I am the person who readily accepts the message, allowing sites like Google to “find my … Continue reading "Where are you now?"

The conflict in Syria is a humanitarian catastrophe on a massive scale, with hundreds of thousands dead and millions of others forced to flee their homes. Recently, the BBC has attempted to expand the impact of the Syrian narrative by tapping into an intimate intersection between humans and technology: the video game. Journalist Mamdouh Akbiek … Continue reading "Electronic Empathy: Video Games as Media"

This post by Dr. Jeff McCall was originally published in The Indy Star on April 3, 2015. The good news is that nearly 90 percent of recently surveyed millennials say they get news off Facebook. The bad news is that most of those social media users stumble into the “news” only when they go to the … Continue reading "What Millennials Consume on Facebook"

Every week, the Prindle Intern team weighs in on an ethical issue together. Each intern is challenged to keep their response to five sentences – Ethics in 5. Click on an intern’s name to check out their previous posts on The Prindle Post! This week’s question: Social Networking Ethics Comments regarding employers or coworkers posted … Continue reading "Ethics in 5: Printerns on Social Networking Ethics"

Nothing in life is free. It’s an old, possibly overused adage, but one that rings ever more true on the Internet. We expect free access to everything on the Internet. Our music on Spotify is free, Facebook, Twitter and all the social media accounts we use to distract us from the drudge of life are … Continue reading "Don’t use ad blocking software for the greater good"

The new Steve Jobs bio says Disney CEO kept Jobs’ cancer remission a secret, which he learned about just an hour before Disney announced its acquisition of Pixar. The deal made Steve Jobs the largest shareholder, and gave him a seat on the board. At first, one might think this is no big deal. Jobs … Continue reading "Disney CEO kept Steve Jobs Cancer Secret"

The social media world is a crazy world, indeed, sparking firestorms over petty things, such as the color of some dress in Scotland. Most social media postings connect people to ideas, news, fun and each other. There is, however, a dark and demented corner of social media where posters threaten and scare individuals. This leaves … Continue reading "Threats on Social Media are Still Threats"

When your name remains detached from something, most of the repercussions from saying certain things seem to disappear. The issue of anonymity online is nothing new – people have been sending hateful comments to people from behind a computer screen for years. Cyberbullying is a hot topic and a major issue among children, teens, and … Continue reading "Ethics of Anonymity Online"

Time is crucial when it comes to the news; every news agency wants to be the first to break a large story. To save time for journalists to focus on the big stories, template stories have been used for a basis for smaller stories. Journalists can type in the specific facts and then be on … Continue reading "Robo-Journalists: Can Robots Do The Job Of A Human Journalist?"

If the government can’t see it, should you be allowed to communicate with it? British Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday that if he is reelected, his Parliament will draft a bill that bans messaging applications that encrypt data so that the government cannot view it. Certain messaging applications’ style of encryption makes it difficult … Continue reading "What the Government Can See and No More?"

Should Facebook suggest posts about the dead on your News Feed? In her article for The Atlantic, Shirley Li wrote about her experience with Facebook suggesting she like a page that was a memorial to a woman who died in 2013. The woman had died in a tragic fire (in a house with a history of code … Continue reading "The Dead on Facebook"

When someone is being recorded, one is more aware of their actions; this applies to even police officers. With many cases of police brutality occurring throughout America, from Ferguson to the recorded death of Eric Garner to the beating of Luis Paulino in 2012, the question of technology and its role in decreasing police brutality … Continue reading "Technology and Police Brutality"

Back when Microsoft Windows XP and Intel’s Pentium 4 Processor were technology du jour, not much was known about the origins of the raw minerals integral to the technology we depend on daily or about the horrendous labors that made possible the innovations of the day. Ethical concepts of blame and praise did not make … Continue reading "Look Inside: The Moral Implications of Personal Choice"

On Monday, President Obama announced that “a free and open Internet was as critical to Americans’ lives as electricity and telephone service” and should be regulated as such. This approach, called net neutrality, will prevent companies from slowing down certain content and allowing companies to pay for a fast lane to get data to consumers. If … Continue reading "A Free and Open Internet"

Apple’s new iWatch, expected to hit markets early in 2015, advances time keeping to a whole new level. Not only does the iWatch keep accurate global time, automatically adjusting to different time zones via satellite, it also tracks daily fitness and provides a way to respond to messages, calls and notifications more easily than we … Continue reading "WARNING: Technological Invasion"