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Social and Ethical Issues - Coggle Diagram
Social and Ethical Issues
Evolution of software applications
Before personal computers hardware and software were linked, software applications being written for large military or business organisations
Personal computers then altered this connection
In the early days (1970s) before the wide acceptance of personal computers, the ideas that form the basis of today's GUIs originated
A team of researchers working on Xerox refined many of the design concepts as the basis of today's GUIs, these researchers were academics and their intention was to investigate and brainstorm ideas for new products rather of the build commercially viable products, they developed the 'Alto' (recognised as the first computer to include a fully bit-mapped display with drop down menus and icons.)
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Command line and Graphical User Interface (GUI)
Command Line interwaces (CLIs) are text based, the user must respind to a prompt with commands or inputs into the sytems in its requied sintax
Graphical user interfaces have largely replaced CLIs but in some cases they remain popular when preforming specialised or automated tasks but in these cases the user must have extensive expertise for these users CLIs are much more efficient
Internet Applications
The network technologies behind the internet were first developed and implemented in the early 1970s for specific military applications
The internet as we know it now came doing the early part of the 1990s and was used to share files and documents, primarily from unis, as the number of servers increase, and it became harder to locate files search engines appeared and web browsers using GUIs were introduced
Intellectual property
All property is protected by the law whether it's physical goods or software, the original design is protected, and you therefore cannot make copies and certainly not sell them on the market.
Software lisencsing Agreements
Software licenses are intended to enforce the intellectual property rights of software developers, these agreements are enforceable by law thus the terminology must be legally correct, they also protect the developers from legal action if their product results in hardship or financial loss of the purchasers.
Terminology:
License - formal permission or authority to use a product, For software these are almost always nonexclusive, meaning they can be licenses to mulitple users, this does not give users ownership of the software rather the right to use it
Agreement: A mutual arrangment ...
This is the property resulting from mental labour, Intellectual property laws cover the design of most products like copies of software, books, music film ect. The copy is usually the exact same as the original and can readily be made by almost anyone with computing knowledge, thats why laws have been passed to protect these.
Social context of software desgin
Ergonomics
The study of how humans interact with their work environment
Inclustivity
The need to cater for a wide and varied audience, including different cultures, economic backgrounds, social groups, disabilities and gender
When developed software you have to take into account peoples cultural backgrounds, to do this including these people in your testing is vital as some Asian cultures have a formal and informal name unlike in western cultures where there is a Christian name and a surname, other thing like how dates are expressed also must be taken into consideration
The dominant language of a country should be used on the user interface when trying to applications are to be sold to those cultures
People's economic backgrounds must be taken into account. Economic characteristics relate to the generation, distribution and use of income and wealth. They can be viewed on a global, national, local or industry specific scale. As Software developers, there's a responsibility to take into consideration the economic status of purchasers. To achieve equality of access to technologies such as software requires that technology is available at an economically viable cost for the widest possible audience
Issues related to the design and devolpment costs
Quality: A measure of how well a product meets the needs of its clients, a product the better meets the needs of users will be more successful however quality costs money
Privacy