Day: March 11, 2014

But Is It Ethical?

From time to time I enjoy trying to get a conversation started on some subject or another…….not always successful but at least I try……I do this because I would like to hear what others think about some of the deeper issues of our time……….

Would you like a subject that will make you talk to yourself and possibly making you argue with yourself?  If so then you are looking for the subject of…..ETHICS!

First let us look at the definition of the term……..what is ethics?  The Internet encyclopedia of Philosophy has a good one……..

The field of ethics (or moral philosophy) involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior. Philosophers today usually divide ethical theories into three general subject areas: metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. Metaethics investigates where our ethical principles come from, and what they mean. Are they merely social inventions? Do they involve more than expressions of our individual emotions? Metaethical answers to these questions focus on the issues of universal truths, the will of God, the role of reason in ethical judgments, and the meaning of ethical terms themselves. Normative ethics takes on a more practical task, which is to arrive at moral standards that regulate right and wrong conduct. This may involve articulating the good habits that we should acquire, the duties that we should follow, or the consequences of our behavior on others. Finally, applied ethics involves examining specific controversial issues, such as abortion, infanticide, animal rights, environmental concerns, homosexuality, capital punishment, or nuclear war.

Morality?  Now there is a subject that is just as irritating as ethics….but that will be for another day and another post……….where do our ethics come from these days?

From the Bible…..or maybe our education…..or from our personal philosophy…….and then there could be from the family unit…….where oh where?

Many of us want to believe that we are a Judeo-Christian country with a like minded philosophy….but yet some of the commandments that we are suppose to live by are broken daily….daily killings….wanton lying……to mention a couple….so if we cannot live by a couple of fairly simple ‘rules’….then can we say we are an ethical people?

Can society teach ethics?  Not to my mind.  We can pass laws that force us to act in a specific way but does that make us ethical?

Can education make us more ethical?  Now this is a good subject.  My answer is not in today’s world……we are NOT taught anymore…..we are given to memorization and that does not lead to retention.  Also philosophy is not taught much anymore unless one wants to be a philosopher or than that it is a elective and only taken to fill a gap not to learn about ourselves……

Ethics is open to opinion……and I bet there will be someone that will jump all over this subject……..

Connectile Dysfunction

The Internet….now there is something we can all agree on….it has changed the way we see the world and helps form our opinions on….well…everything.  We all have had our problems with our internet provider, right?  I am sure that we could exchange horror stories for hours….but that is not why I write.

What do you pay for your cel service or your internet?  I ask this because I have some disturbing information….but before that let me rant a moment…..

Remember a couple of years ago, back in the Arab Spring?  The story is that the massive protests and such were fueled by social media, like cell phones and Facebook, now I ask how does a country like Egypt, for instance, when the average annual income is around $10,000 afford service to drive the protests?  Apparently it is a whole lot cheaper elsewhere than here in this country.  Would think that a free market would drive this to be cheaper than a country that has one provider, right?  Then why have the free market if it cannot accomplish this one service right?

With that rant out of the way……let me now ask……have you experienced slow downloads?  How about a service that drops in and out?  Ever ask why?

I was reading an article awhile back and discovered a few things……

according to a recent study by Ookla Speedtest, the U.S. ranks a shocking 31st in the world in terms of average download speeds. The leaders in the world are Hong Kong at 72.49 Mbps and Singapore on 58.84 Mbps. And America? Averaging speeds of 20.77 Mbps, it falls behind countries like Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Uruguay.

Its upload speeds are even worse. Globally, the U.S. ranks 42nd with an average upload speed of 6.31 Mbps, behind Lesotho, Belarus, Slovenia, and other countries you only hear mentioned on Jeopardy.

So how did America fall behind? How did the country that literally invented the internet — and the home to world-leading tech companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Facebook, Google, and Cisco — fall behind so many others in download speeds?

The 1996 Telecommunications Act — which was meant to foster competition — allowed cable companies and telecoms companies to simply divide markets and merge their way to monopoly, allowing them to charge customers higher and higher prices without the kind of investment in internet infrastructure, especially in next-generation fiber optic connections, that is ongoing in other countries. Fiber optic connections offer a particularly compelling example. While expensive to build, they offer faster and smoother connections than traditional copper wire connections. But Verizon stopped building out fiber optic infrastructure in 2010 — citing high costs — just as other countries were getting to work.

Just think for a moment…….we are behind some third world countries…..is that what American Exceptionalism is all about?