All the ways a computer can harm you
At their best, computers are tools that help me leverage my intelligence to further my projects.
At their worst, they are ways I have let adversarial financial and political interests into my mind and home.
My computer can’t physically assault me (yet). But it could harm me in other ways.
I think a computer science education should start with an explanation of computers as tools, highlighting how they can be used well and how they can cause harms to individuals and societies.
Here I reflect on harms that computers cause to individuals. I think computers are highly customisable technologies and that through the right design and engineering these harms can be greatly mitigated. I think it is useful to have a clear head about the harms and then build against them.
Social: We meet some of our social needs through computers. This makes us vulnerable to social manipulation (e.g. online scams), or to unnecessary negative experiences of social rejection/cyberharrassment/cyberbullying. AI agents are starting to provide us companionship or fill other functions that could historically only be obtained from social interaction, such as conversations about our personal life. It is important to ensure that our social needs are being met in ways that serve us. On the open internet, there are many actors with their own agendas who will seek to exploit our unmet social needs.
Cognitive: Computers give us access to too much information. This can worsen our decision making, or lead to cognitive strain. One could argue that it is our choice whether to seek out and consume this information. However even our mild tendencies of curiosity and concern can be exploited by dark UX patterns such as recommendation algorithms to drive engagement, clickbait, etc. , leading us to seek out and consume more information that is appropriate. Another risk is misinformation as a lot of media online or generated by AI agents is misleading or incorrect. It is important to be careful with websites designed to steal our attention, it is important to reflect and develop good practices for how we seek out and process (high quality and reasonable quantity) information that is relevant to living our lives.
Audiovisual: Beyond text, the main forms of media we consume on computers are auditory and visual media. These forms of media are more engaging and evoke stronger reactions from us than written media. It is probably more difficult to doomscroll or have a social media addiction for purely textual media. There is also a risk of damaging our eyes and ears from overusing computers. Another risk is overstimulation such as flashing lights, loud sounds, horrifying sounds and images It may be worth being cautious of our audiovisual media diet, favouring media that is textual to ensure
Financial: It has become very easy to spend money online, this amplifies harms from gambling and lootboxes, impulsive consumerism, or FOMO investing - anything where we can be convinced to spend or "invest" money against our better judgment. The digitalisation of finance has also increased risks from hacking, phishing and online scams.
Privacy/Information security: As we store sensitive information on networked computers, or even merely interact with them - information about us is created which is then accessible by many interested parties. This information allows them to predict our behaviour and control us which is valuable for political and financial reasons.
Reputational: Computers allow information about us to be widely shared and reach all interested parties thus causing reputational damage.
Physical harms: Computers can cause us some physical harms through overuse. As computers are embedded in machines such as cars, robots and drones, the potential for them to cause physical harms to us is increasing.