Transcript Strategic Leadership

Business 303 Sheppard
Business Society & Ethics, Week 12:
Technology
BUSINESS ETHICS WEEK 12:
MAIN QUESTIONS
1. What are some of the positive promises of
technology?
2. What are some of the ethical perils of
technology?
3. Why is trust important in the hi-tech area?
4. What are some of the moral issues related
to intellectual property rights?
5. Does the future need us?
Wk. 12-2
1. Technology: Promise & Peril (1 / 2)
• Promise of:
– Working with anyone anywhere.
– Working without anyone anywhere.
– Customized Production.
– Meeting like-minded folks.
– More Efficient Production to meet
demand of an ever growing population.
– A whole new virtual world.
– Oh, pick your utopian vision.
Wk. 12-3
1. Technology: Promise & Peril (2 / 2)
• Peril of:
– Broken Property rights.
– Un-organize-able virtual office labor
– Killer Nanotech / Killer Biotech.
– Increasingly Concentrated Wealth.
– Invaded Privacy.
– Loss of Freedom (I Robot).
– A congregation of Nuts.
– Neglect of the real for a virtual world.
– Oh, pick your dystopian vision.
Wk. 12-4
2. Technology: The Present & Trust
• Collaborative product development:
– Need driven by product complexity.
– Need for trust to lower transaction cost.
• Speed of change means that:
– Arrangements are fluid.
– A community of Interest needs to be
Created (pools of talented people).
Hi Tech (e.g. gaming)
 Entertainment (Vancouver film industry).
 Within the community people need trust.

3a. Intellectual Property Rights
• Is the never-ending copyright right?
– Mickey Mouse ain’t chicken feed.
• What does the author produce?
From Hitt, Ireland, Hoskisson,
Rowe & Sheppard,
.
Strategic
Mgmt.,
2007
Wk. 12-6
3b. Moral Rights in Software (1 / 2)
• Natural Rights / Lockean Labour
Investment & Ownership [280]:
– Why should labour be an investment
in results & not a dissolution of effort.
– Many People can own the same piece
of intellectual property at once.

Software piracy steals only developers’
ability to make profit, not actual property
• Natural Right to Freedom of Thought
– Is this really a version of thought?Wk. 12-7
3b. Moral Rights in Software (2 / 2)
• Consequentialist Arguments [281]:
– Who would produce the stuff if they
were not compensated?
What about a credit system similar to
what we have with scientific publications.
 How about hardware corp.s creating it.

• Is it OK to make a back-up copy?
– They’ll get you on the next version.
Wk. 12-8
3c. Moral Arguments for Copying [282]
• Laws protecting software are bad.
– All property law is unjust.
– Intellectual property law is unjust.
– OR these laws could be a lot better.
• Making a copy does no harm.
• Not making a copy does harm.
– The drowning person argument.
Wk. 12-9
4. Info Ethics in a worldwide context
• Digital divide between rich & poor.
– Quantitative imbalance between N.& S.

Altering a nation’s social fabric
– Inequality of Information sources.

Going to a fee structure limits access.
– Will to dominate Info. & Channels.
– Lack of Info. On developing countries.
– Info. Imperialism (American Culture).
– Message ill suited for the receiver?

Do countries have the right to restrict it?
5. Hacker Ethics
• In defense of hacking.
– All information should be free.

The early vision of sharing.
– Hacking shows system weaknesses.

Like a B&E to show you need an alarm.
– No harm done as long as no changes.

Hard to avoid making no footprint.
– Keeping Big Brother at bay?

Who will police these police?
Wk. 12-11
6. Why the future doesn’t need us (1/2)
• Dystopian Visions.
– Genetics, Nanotechnology & Robotics
Whole new classes of accidents (Canola)
 Or other scary stuff we do intentionally:

– P. K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
– W. Gibson’s Neuromancer (he invented cyberspace)
• Exaggerated Rumors of our demise.
Antibiotic resistant bacteria
 DDT resistant mosquitoes.
 Why not robot resistant humans?
 Humans: the cheapest thing in the Market

6. Why the future doesn’t need us (2/2)
• What is a human
– Intelligent Robots (2030?)
Turning Test
 Asimov’s Three Laws?

– A downloaded self (Lawnmower Man)
• Controlling Nanotech.
– Nano-bots in the Junkyard.
– Out of control grey goo.
– Is this just Hi-Tech as the new B.E.M.?
Wk. 12-13
7a. In defense of the Naked Mind? (1/2)
• In defense of Luddites [300].
– Work rule changes.
Not the machines but people policies.
 How were machines being used &
for whose benefit

– Surplus people from changes in Tech.
increase faster than the number of new
jobs or Population reduction.
– Do we start leading virtual lives?

Neo in the Matrix
Wk. 12-14
7a. In defense of the Naked Mind? (2/2)
• Advent of the Money Machine [303].
– Disruptive market reactions (NYSE 1987).
– The tech. is in the “wrong hands?”
• Expressive creative media [301].
– After the Photo Impressionists.
• Hi-tech lore to do thinking, feeling
judging & creating better than us.
– Thru a glass darkly
(What does the machine see?)
Wk. 12-15
7b. What’s Important in life?
• Lead lives with love & compassion
– To do those things machines cannot
– Machines do not have responsibilities
• What makes lives worth living?
Wk. 12-16
Bye
Bye