In the current society, everything is relevant with software engineering, and we are difficult to live without internet. We are stepping in a technical high speed development information age, and peoples shopping, exchanges, and social contact rely on many different software engineering. Therefore, we play important roles for the society and have the responsibility for people who trust us and data. Since we provide service by software and collect data for developing, we have the responsibility and ethic for using these data. Personally, for software engineering, ethic means that we must respect individual’s free will and be responsible for users.
Respecting individual’s free will represents that we should never force users to make choices or make choices for users. Even though sometimes people rely on our software or Apps to make choices, we should provide fair and open information rather than control their free wills. Furthermore, we should not take benefit and making money by selling users information because it does not bring any benefit and convenience to people but can hurt the right of their privacy. Imagine a case that people who use a food service App receive emails from another medical company because the food service App analysis their user information and sell them to take more benefit. Even though some people actually need or look for these kinds of medical service, they will still feel be violated because the App do not get permissions from users about selling their information to take benefit. It’s similar to the case FaceBook reveals user information that many accounts affected by privacy violation. No matter what reason is Facebook should never reveal their data because it might affect user’s daily lives. Individuals information are not like some open resources that can be put in public, and no one has the right to take benefits by selling user information unless themselves.
In the development information age, getting information is very easy since we might only need to use internet and we are able to get what we want. For software engineering, we need to be aware of that we need to take responsibility for the data we collect. People choose an App and provide their information because people trust them and believe they will protect and respect their individual’s free will. Any scientific and technological innovation cannot happen without data, so we should never the trust between users and developers.
In the information age, we are closer to each other than what we think. Having software engineering ethic is important because it can avoid privacy violation in some levels. For developers, we can use data we collect to develop our technics to help people improve their lives rather than making choices for people. We must respect individual’s free will and never put our own will onto other people.