1) There are five steps involved in an ethical analysis. The first is identifying and clearly describing the facts, which will be used to help define the solution. Second, you must define the conflict and identify the higher-order values involved. This is because the parties usually claim during a dispute they are all pursuing higher values. Third, stakeholders should be identified so you can figure out what they want, which might also be used later when figuring out a solution. Fourth, you must identify the options that you can reasonably take, even though this may not satisfy all the stakeholders. Finally, you must identify the potential consequences of your actions. This would include looking at the consequences from various points of views. There are also six ethical principles that can be used to help. One principle is called the Golden Rule, which is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Another principle is Descartes’ Rule of Change. This principle states that if an action cannot be taken repeatedly, it is not right to take at all. Another principle would be the Risk Aversion Principle. This one says you should take the action that produces the least harm or least potential cost. There is also Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative, which first has you evaluate the action. If the action is not right for everyone to take, then it is not the right one to take at all. Another principle would be the Utilitarian Principle, which says that one should do the action that achieves the higher or greater value. Finally, there is the Ethical “no free lunch” Rule. This principle says that you should assume that virtually all tangible and intangible objects are owned by someone else unless there is someone or something that says otherwise.

2) Privacy can be defined as the claim of individuals to be left alone, free from surveillance or interference from other individuals or organizations, including the state. Fair information practices (FIP) is a regime that most American and European privacy laws are based on. FIP are a set of principles that governs the collection and use of information and is based on mutuality of interest between the holder of information and an individual. FIP was also restated and extended by the FTC in 1998 to provide guidelines for protecting online privacy and has also been used to drive changes in legislation concerning privacy. The Internet challenges the protection of individual privacy and of intellectual privacy in many ways. Cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded by a website to a visitor’s hard drive, could be used to allow websites to track the visits to a site and help to develop profiles on visitors. There are also web beacons, also known as web bugs. Web beacons are tiny graphics embedded in e-mail and Web pages that monitor who is reading the message. Yet another challenge is spyware. Spyware can be secretly installed on a user’s computer and can transmit the user’s keystrokes or display unwanted ads. Finally, just how much data that companies like Google gathers can be a challenge. Depending on how Google uses the information it gathers, including for users like behavioral targeting, may fall under a challenge to privacy.

3) There are many arguments both for and against digital media. Some arguments for digital media are that resources (like Wikipedia or Google) really help organize knowledge and make all this knowledge easily accessible to the world. Also, print media went through very similar stages that digital media is now going through and we could not dream of living in today’s world without print media. This makes some people believe that history may just repeat itself. The Internet might bring in a similar revolution in publishing capability and collaboration, which could help society as a whole. Video games, Television, and the Internet are also effective at developing our visual processing ability. However, there are some arguments against digital media as well. Some arguments against digital media are that it allows millions of people to create media (through the use of blogs, photos, videos, etc). All of this has lowered the quality of media. News studies have shown that digital technologies are also damaging our ability to think clearly and focus. It has also been shown that video games, TV, and the Internet detracts from our ability to retain information and think deeply. While it is true that the Internet promotes multitasking, it has been proven that multitaskers are a lot easier to distract and, for most people, multitasking does not always mean greater productivity. Therefore, the brain may become dependent on the excitement experienced when confronted with something new if it is used to constant digital media usage. Overall, I personally do not believe that the negatives outweigh the positives of digital media. I think this is because a lot of the “issues” with digital media can be fixed. The main issue seems to be multitasking. This can easily be solved by users just focusing on one thing at a time and users work to not get too attached to their media and have the willpower to turn off their technologies once in a while. Some people get a bit more concerned when talking about digital technologies and children. This is because children are still developing their brains. So, digital technologies could contribute to children’s struggles to resist impulses as well as their ability to set priorities. I personally believe there is really no reason for a child who is eight years old or younger to have a cell phone. Eight years old is too young to be carrying around a cell phone, especially since there is no reason for them to have a cell phone. Children of that age should be under constant supervision, so there should not be an issue of the child just going out on their own and maybe needing a way to get a hold of their parents. I am not saying that I do not think children should not be introduced to digital technologies, because I think that is important. Digital technologies like computers have taken root so deeply in our society and are used so much that it is probably important to try to introduce children to these technologies so that they can understand them better when they grow up. I just do not think that means an eight year old needs to be carrying around a cell phone.

4) Probably the biggest ethical problem in this case is whether radiation therapy should be used and, if there are mistakes, should the hospitals report them. The case study points out many instances where radiation therapy has actually caused more harm than good in the patients it was supposed to be helping, usually due to an error on the part of the hospital staff. Then, because the hospital does not usually want to admit their mistakes and possibly cause them to lose patients, the hospitals do not always want to report the incidents. The basic concept of ethics is doing what is right. So the big question is, is it ethical to use radiation treatment for cancer, especially knowing that the slightest mistake can result in more pain and the death of the patient. Even knowing that a majority of the time radiation therapy will result in really helping to cure the patient of cancer, is it right to use a treatment that can so easily have such devastating consequences. That is the major ethical concern that radiation treatment for cancer can bring up. Most of the errors described in the case study can be attributed to the management, the organization, and the technology itself. The management would be the hospital employing the use of the radiation techniques for treatment. The management should be making sure that its staff are fully trained and careful in using the radiation treatment. The organization (specifically, the organizations making the machines for radiation treatment) should be making sure that their machines are not lethal so easily. There is basically no failsafe on the machines to stop them from using more radiation then necessary or make it easy for the hospital staff to check their work. The organization should try to make sure their machines are safer as well as effective. Finally, the technology itself can partly be blamed. The technology, while there is good intention behind it, is constantly growing and becoming more powerful. While this can be good in the battle against cancer, this can also mean more danger. The people behind the technology should realize that, before moving on to just stronger technologies, we need to be able to use the ones we have now without any incidents. Even with all these fatal incidents, there is no central reporting agency gathering the information about the issues. If there were a central reporting agency, there might be a decrease in the number of incidents in the future. This is because there would be one centralized location that would hold all the information about the problems encountered by hospitals all across the country. This way, hospitals could see the potential problems and errors that can happen when using the radiation therapy and the radiation machines and then take more steps to prevent them. Plus, those that are creating the machines and the technology for radiation therapy could see what kind of problems hospitals have been having and then work towards correcting those problems on newer models. Overall, this could bring the number of incidents down and save many lives.