For this specific semester I chose the topic of “The Ethics of Computer Hacking.” The reason being I am working towards the tech industry as a career, more specifically the cyber security side of things. This makes for a huge emphasis on hacking on both sides of the spectrum and I am really intrigued by the idea of understanding the hackers mindset. As part of the cyber security profession I would need to know how to hack, with the permission of the company of course, to find faults in the system. But as I went about asking around about hacking I found a negative stigma attached to the hacking world. This is where I formulated my own perspective of not all types of hacking are bad, they just get a bad rep from the fear of malicious hackers. 

The only thing that really happened to my perspective on the issue was become more solidified. I knew the general information going into the beginning stages of research, but I did become more aware of possible faults within the community. I was however super surprised about how easy it is for one to go from black hat hacker to white hat and vice-versa. All it takes was a personal experience, mostly jail time, to make someone switch their whole set of ethics and belief systems.

The resources that really helped shape and shift my thinking would have to be the personal interviews with real life hackers. Many are doing what they do in the pursuit of knowledge and for the safety of others using technology. The electronic plain is the newest frontier of exploration and there is so much potential for not only good things but also the bad. With the right people in the right places the future is full of endless possibilities all that is needed is people with solid ethics to help propel us into the next big thing for humanity.

This was hard to choose between the varying genres, due to this being a split topic between emotional and statistical information. There is the emotional/metal aspect of the varying ethics within the community that is a range of motives and reasonings for why people are in the hacking industry. Then there is the information and statistics side of things that make for how many people are affected and how many there are out there who know how to use these tools to accomplish an attack. So, for those reasons I tried to incorporate a little bit of both some information as well as emotional effects.

The biggest connection I found between all the varying genres I would say would be the research factor. They all require background knowledge especially the persuasion effect and information effect, but even in the memoir there was research needed to find how the lady in my story got hacked at the conference. I feel like the information provided in my chosen mediums was my strong suit where my formatting was the area for improvement. 

When it came to revision and design post first draft it was extremely helpful to have the peer reviews as well as instructor input. This provided a plethora of perspectives and possible edits that overall helped the final drafts of my work. As a part of my notebook requirements I went back and started to look at the different drafts I had done and most of the revisions I had to do were fairly simple.  Thanks to the peer reviews that were specifically asked questions to help rubric the reviews.