The ITGS exams are looming and there is a lot to revise. For paper 2 you need to read and analyse a news article. To help you practise, here are 4 ITGS related news articles from the last week.
The woman whose phone ‘misdiagnosed HIV’
This article describes a woman in Kenya who had recently acquired her first smart phone. An app she had downloaded claimed to determine the user’s HIV status simply by reading their fingerprint. The app claimed she was HIV positive.
Of course it is impossible to diagnose HIV in this way, but the article is a good example of a few ITGS social and ethical issues. Reliability and integrity is a clear problem here as the app, it turned out, was intended as a prank. However, this does raise the question of how we can assess the reliability of apps and other software we use – especially when they perform critical tasks such as diagnosis of disease.
In this regard the article also has some relevance to the 2017 ITGS case study. (Read the full article)
E-sports to become a medal event in 2022 Asian Games
With a demonstration event set for Jakarta 2018 and medals to be awarded in 2020, E-sports has made another big step to wider recognition.
There are links here to several aspects of the ITGS syllabus here. The way in which E-sports are broadcast is very relevant to public and personal communications. There is very little coverage in the mainstream media, but streaming technologies such as Twitch as heavily used. Gaming – and potentially the effects of excessive gaming and computer use – could also be linked to this article. There are also wider questions about what constitutes a ‘sport’. (Read the full article)
Facebook suspect Steve Stephens hunted across US
An extraordinary and shocking news article from the BBC about a man who seemingly committed a random murder live on Facebook. At the time of writing the suspect, Steve Stephens, is still the subject of a large manhunt. The article raises many ITGS issues. While thankfully such extreme cases are rare, it does raise the question of how social media and our ability (need?) to stay constantly connected affect our behaviour. (Read the full article)
Rogue robot is blamed for human’s gruesome death
This is a longer news article than the others here, and deals with a much more serious issue. Technician Wanda Holbrook was killed in 2015 when a power she was working near unexpectedly started up and crushed her to death. Her husband is now suing several robotics manufacturers. This article raises interesting questions about the responsibility for software designers (it reminded me of the Therac-25 case), and the safe guards they build into systems. Of course there is also the expectation from many people that systems should be completely error free. As ITGS students we should know that this is never possible. (Read the full article)
The ITGS exams are looming and there is a lot to revise. For paper 2 you need to read and analyse a news article. Here are 4 ITGS related articles to help you practise.
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