A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html?_r=3&hp=&pagewanted=all
The Waldorf School in Silicon Valley, California, teaches their students without any technology in the classrooms.  This is an alternative method of teaching and its presence in Silicon Valley, the heart of the computer industry, highlights the ongoing debate about technology's role in education.
Stakeholders: Parents, students, teachers, the technology industry
Social and Ethical Issues:

• People and Machines: Will they be able to learn tech skills later in life?  Do we need technology to teach?
• Equality of Access: Is this somehow artificially making the students unequal with the rest of society?

Areas of Impact: Government, Education, Science, Employment, Education
My opinion: I am not sure.  While I support alternate views of education and the concept that not all technology must be embraced simply because it is there, I also believe that technology has a place.  A lot of what they are doing teaches life skills that people are perhaps lacking who learn solely on technology, but certain skills that are taught that way are not as relevant as they were when this program began, and we learn skills not related to technology even though we use it.  For example, I can multiply 4 times 5 in my head easily, just as well as they can, despite having grown up with calculators.  I think that judgment on this issue should wait until a few classes have graduated this program and we can see how well they do in college, workplace, and life compared to graduates of more tech-accepting schools.
Do I agree: Kind of.  There is not really a reason to use technology in the classroom in the first few grades, and learning handwriting, mental math, and language skills is important, but I think that once doing these without a computer has been mastered, there is no point in not using one, as it makes the same work faster and easier without detracting from quality.
Some positives and negatives:

• Positives: Easier to write papers, kids learn from young age to use technology, more prepared for business environment, grading and submission of work is easier
• Negatives: Taught early to need technology, become "addicted" to tech stuff when very young, kids do not know how to interact

Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/technology/amazon-rewrites-the-rules-of-book-publishing.html
Synopsis: Amazon.com, which has set itself up as a competitor to bookstores, is now entering the publication business, allowing authors to publish e-books without the need for a publication company.
Stakeholders: writers, publication companies, Amazon corporation
Social and Ethical Issues:

• Intellectual property.  Anyone can publish anything in an e-book, including someone else's work
• People and Machines.  This makes e-book readers more necessary, as more books will be published only on Amazon.

Areas of Impact: Business, Entertainment, Arts, Government
My opinion:  This is a step forward for the writing business.  If anyone can publish their works, it means that you do not have to have connections in the publication industry in order to be a successful writer.  On the other hand, a lot of really bad books will probably be written and published with nothing holding them back, but essentially, this makes the field of writing more capitalist.
Future impacts/changes: More people will get e-readers, publishing companies will start to go under, Amazon will get even more profitable, internet publishing businesses will arise that publicize releases so writers can distinguish their works from the thousands of other publications on Amazon.

Diebold voting machines can be hacked by remote control

http://politics.salon.com/2011/09/27/votinghack/
Summary:
Millions of American voters use electronic voting machines.  A new study indicates that with minimal technical skills and materials, these machines can be untraceably hacked.
Stakeholders: Voters, hackers, the government
Area of Impact: Politics and Government.  This can be used to influence who wins elections and controls the country.
Social/Ethical Issues: Security, Privacy, Reliability, Control, Equality of Access.
If the voting machines are this easy to hack, it compromises security and the privacy of the users.  It also makes them unreliable, as they can be taken offline by anyone, and destroys equality of access, as voters in affected areas do not have equal access to methods of influencing the outcome of a vote.
Why we use them in the first place:
If they work right, electronic voting machines are more private, harder to compromise, and far more efficient than paper ballot voting.
Disadvantages:
As this issue shows, it is relatively simple to hack these systems, allowing one person to change the outcome of an entire election.
Possible Solutions:
Better security around voting booths, redundant systems to make hacking more challenging, signal jammers in voting booth to prevent remote signals from getting to the machines to change what they do.