Innovator vs. Exploiter

We often think of the term "exploiter" as a bad thing. A person who exploits children in sweatshops is definitely a bad person. A person who exploits their workers at work is a bad manager. However, an exploiter of ideas is not always seen the same way. Both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were exploiters of an idea and look at how we view them now. They are praised and heralded as great business men who changed the world with what they have done. Neither of them invented the idea that makes them so much money, they exploited it. Xerox and other companies initially thought of the mouse and the visual operating system, but Apple and Windows are the ones credited for them. This creates some interesting ethical questions. When is it ethical to exploit an idea and assume the credit for the idea? How much should the inventor be credited for the idea? When is it considered unethical for an exploiter to benefit from the use of another persons idea? On the other hand, would we even have the idea if it were not for the exploiters?

Social Media Hijaking

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/24/isis-twitter-youtube-message-social-media-jihadi It is no question that social media is a powerful force in our world today. Hashtags, posts, online videos, forums, blogs, and status updates are often used to brighten our day or make us think our voice might be heard. What happens however, when terrorist groups like ISIS gets caught piggybacking everyone's favorite cat videos to promote their extremist views? This presents a significant dilemma for the social media companies. Filtering content will cause users to use other, un-filtered social media services, but not filtering the content will allow terrorist organizations to spread their messages. So, how does a company like Twitter determine what content should be allowed and what content should not? Luckily in the case of the ISIS content, the authorities and social media giants, are searching out the criminals posting these videos and hashtags. Ethically, twitter and youtube should be searching to remove this content, but where do they draw the line at what to remove and what to keep? What or who determines if what I write is good or bad? The government? Public opinion? In a world where right and wrong are a point of view, this becomes a really hard question to answer.

Current Event 1

This week, Apple sold over 10 million copies of the newest iPhone. These sales are projected to push them into a record breaking quarter. It is interesting to think that a couple of tech nerds found a way to turn a simple hobby into a company that sells 10 million units in one weekend. After our class discussion on "studying the fish", it is clear that Apple knows their fish. They have spent many years studying the markets and understanding what customers want. They have demonstrated that they can generate enough hype to have people camp outside their stores just to get their new products first. What makes this an even greater feat is that the most prominent features are not new to smart phones. Other screens are bigger and better, other speakers are louder and clearer, battery life on the iPhone6 is similar to other phones, even features like NFC, barometer, accelerometer, and gyroscope have existed in phones for years. So, what is it that makes them so good. They know their fish. They know what people want, or rather they know how to tell a person what he wants and when he wants it. Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/technology/apple-sells-10-million-new-iphones-in-first-weekend.html?_r=0

Information to Wisdom

The technology of today is astounding. Millions of archives are available for research at the click of a mouse and thousands of opinions are heard every minute at the update of a status. So what do we do with this power, we see how many people agree that it should be sunny or we watch fruit with superimposed mouths say really annoying things. Elder Dallin H. Oaks in his talk entitled "Focus and Priorities" teaches us that "[O]ur biggest need is a clearer focus on how we should value and use what we already have." Vast amounts of information exists, and programs have been written to help process it all, but it is time for us to do something astounding with all that information. To do this we must reverse T.S. Elliot's famous saying and turn our information into knowledge, and our knowledge into wisdom. For only with wisdom, can correct decisions be made.