English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

I found it funny how they TCT used Albert Einstein’s work with the nuclear bomb during the war as an example of an ethical dilemma. I always like his quote “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hid your sources,” it is kind of the plagiarists motto. Plagiarism also seems like it is going to be one of our greatest hurdles for this project. Being that this is a white paper, we really aren’t going to be coming up with anything original or our own ideas. Most of what we present will be information, data, and diagrams from other sources.

This week’s reading contained a lot of common sense information about being ethical. However, I still feel like there is a lot of gray area with ethics on topics dealing with the environment and examples like Einstein’s letter to Roosevelt. And obviously, everyone is going to have a different opinion on what is ethical and what isn’t.

I believe that the biggest problem in terms of ethics for the white paper will be copyright laws. Since we are using lots of information taken from the internet we must cite our sources properly and make sure to follow the rules dealing with copyright laws. Plagiarism, which is copyright infringement where you use someone else’s text, tends to be a problem commonly involved with online researching and can have very serious consequences since it is in fact enforceable by law.

The white paper project presents many issues of ethics I hadn’t even considered before reading this week’s TCT. Since this is a group project, it raises both social and personal ethical decisions. Like the text says, many of these aren’t in fact ethical dilemmas, but simply the difference between right and wrong, and the right choice has probably already been made without extra consideration.

According to TCT’s chapter five is about ethics. Ethics are the systems of morals that guide our society to act properly in any given situation. I believe ethics are part of a foundation towards people acting properly in a well formed society.

Ethics in industry is the same principle everyone was taught growing up. Whether a factor of personal moral or common law, it is important to value these ideas for appropriate conduct. Ignoring such important standards, companies such as Enron see disappointing consequences. The workplace is exposed to a countless amount of ethical decisions and situations.

This week’s reading is about ethics and how they apply to the technical workplace. When thinking back on the previous projects and the current one there is definitely one specific project that sticks out as an ethical problem to me and that is the instruction project. I did my project on how to use a specific file sharing software program in conjunction with a website. The obvious dilemma of whether to use the program to download copyrighted material or only use it to download files considered “fair use” rests on the user’s shoulders.

As students, we constantly hear about ethical situations. “Don’t download music illegally.” “Don’t copy your homework.” “Make sure to cite your sources.” We’re all expected to know Purdue’s policies on academic dishonesty and follow them accordingly. Furthermore, there are classes in our curriculums that cover professional ethics, so most of the information in this chapter wasn’t exactly new to me.

According to Chapter 5 in TCT there are 3 main types of ethics. There are personal ethics, social ethics, and conservation ethics. When I think about the ethics involved in my previous instructions project the first thing that comes to mind is plagiarism. Many of us were creating instructions on how to use products that I believe most all of which already have instructions about them. It would have been very easy for someone to just look at some existing instructions and copy that down for their instruction set.

The reading for this week was very straightforward and contained most things I would consider to be common sense for most people in term of ethics. I think the Albert Einstein example of being torn between social ethics and his personal ethics is a dilemma that many of us has faced and had to deal with, often resulting in guilt or doubt.