Notes
I thought the lectures were quite interesting because of the change in pace from the usual technical stuff.
One concept that clicked for me was the Veil of Ignorance. This framework asks you to imagine you do not know who you are in a society. You could be the CEO of a tech company or a person who has no access to a computer. If you design a system from this perspective, you are more likely to make it fair for everyone. I found this to be a very practical way to think about software design.
We also discussed Policy Vacuums. This happens when technology moves faster than the law. For example, AI can do things that there are no rules for yet. This creates a situation where the software engineer has to decide what is right because the government has not decided yet.
The lectures also covered how software can fail. We looked at the difference between intentional failures and accidents. Intentional Failures, like the Volkswagen emissions scandal is a clear example of a company choosing to do the wrong thing. For accidents, the Crowdstrike and AWS outages showed how simple mistakes can stop the world from working.
These examples showed me that my work can have a huge impact. Even if I do not mean to cause harm, a small bug can lead to a big problem for many people.
The most serious part of the week was thinking about my future career. We talked about Creative Destruction. It describes how new technology replaces old ways of doing things. This often means people lose their jobs. As an engineer, I might build a tool that replaces a human worker. I have to think about the ethics of that.
We also talked about the power of the individual. Sometimes a company might ask an engineer to do something that is not right. This could lead to a need for whistleblowing. It was interesting to learn about federal resignations over data privacy. It makes me realize that I will have to make tough choices in the future.
Overall, these lectures made me realize that being a good engineer is about more than just writing fast code. It is also about thinking about the people who will use that code.