Ethical responsibility comes down to having a positive impact on the world. Are we somehow, someway making the world better through our existence? This isn’t just calculated as some moral sum of our lives; you could have done benevolent things the majority of your life but it doesn’t really matter if you do something awful today. Rather being ethically responsible is a choice we make every moment in our life. We can’t undo are ethical failings of the past, but we can learn from them and put those lessons to practice in the present. We shouldn’t rest on the laurels of our ethical successes of the past either, but rather keep striving to have a positive impact today. When I talk about what I look for in a career, I always say I want to use technology to have a positive impact on the world. However, Bui made me rethink the future tense of this motto when he said we shouldn’t simply think about doing good when we’re well into our careers but rather try to use our skills to do good today. I keep saying I want to do good, but there’s no reason I can’t be doing that right now. Sometimes I can fall into the trap of being complacent with “I’m not doing anything wrong.” But the Parable of the Talents teaches us that such complacency is wrong, as we should be contributing our talents to the world. I shouldn’t wait to contribute such talents, as what really matters ethically is the I am making contributions right now. I hope to do more now to help the community, as I know that simply going to class and working a campus job is not morally sufficient, but rather complacent. I need to be morally proactive, and see how I can better contribute to society. The class discussions about whether coding is a superpower and the reference to Uncle Ben’s “With great power comes great responsibility” reminded of the DVD cover of Spiderman 3, one of my personal favorite movies. It reads “Every Hero Has a Choice.” I think it can be argued that anybody in any career has an opportunity to be a hero, and it all hinges on the choices that we make. As a devout Catholic I believe one of the greatest gifts God has given us is free choice, as it allows us to really prove ourselves in life. Through the choices we make each and every day, the goal is to express that I am a servant to others, and therefore a servant to God. I knew this goal going into college, and it feels like ever since then I go through cycles of proactively achieving it and passively neglecting it. What I really need to strive for is consistency, so I that I am always actively express such ethical responsibility. I heard a lot of great interpretations of living an ethical life in class this week, but the one that hit me the hardest was the one from Ed Mylett that Horacio shared at the end of Thursday’s class: “My dream is that at the end of my life when I meet the man I could have become, the best version of myself... we are identical twins. For me that is heaven.” With the large impact of tech and recent controversies, there are a lot of moral concerns when it comes to careers in technology. As people pursuing those careers, the best thing we can do to ensure a good future is to be the best versions of ourselves as we approach these high impact jobs.
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AuthorMarcos Salamanca Archives
October 2019
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