Term Paper for Information Management Policy and Ethics class: A Critical Examination of Jeff Dunn's Virtual Worlds and Moral Evaluation
This piece of work is my final term paper for my Policy and Ethics in Information Management course in my masters program. This course consisted of diving into information issues that can arise in organizational and social contexts. In this course I strengthened my understanding of philosophy specifically focusing on ethical principles, freedom of expression, privacy rights, and intellectual property. In addition, this course taught the principles of crafting effective arguments, proper debating tactics and how to create logical claims and rebuttals. This course gave me the foundation to learn how to appropriately approach, acknowledge and contest possible social, ethical and moral issues in my future career in the information technology field and beyond.
This paper was my final term paper for the course. In this assignment we were tasked with choosing a reading from the course (or beyond) to analyze the authors arguments. After this initial analysis of the overarching claims in the paper, we were then told to critique the authors arguments and identify where the author succeeded in his crafting his claims and also identify where the author fell short. Lastly, we were told to give our own opinion on the topic and create our own argument with logical rationale to support our stance. In all of my school work I always attempt to bring in my own interests whenever possible, so the paper I chose to evaluate was related to morality in video games. Jeff Dunn brings to light many thought provoking ideas surrounding what we consider morally wrong and right and how this might change when entering an online environment. In this 14 page long report, I dive into evaluating his claims and then forming my own opinion on the matter using the knowledge gained in this class regarding argument crafting techniques, philosophical moral dilemmas and historical ethical ideologies. This piece of work showcases my extensive writing capabilities, highlights my ability to understand intricate topics and craft effective arguments, and reveals my knowledge gained in policy and ethics from this course.
This article truly made me think about this idea of virtual worlds and how our ethics might differ when entering an online space versus living in our reality. As a gamer, I felt truly connected to this paper and it made me consider ethical and moral dilemmas I had never thought of to this extent in an online environment. This class and specifically this paper made me dive deep into understanding my own moral code as well as consider how I create and defend arguments. Both of these being imperative to being a well rounded individual. This piece of work I am extremely proud of, and thoroughly enjoyed writing; I got a 100% on the paper and a 4.0 in the course. With that said, I always believe there is room for improvement — especially when it comes to writing — and an argumentative piece is an opinion piece at the end of the day, so please reach out if you have any comments, feedback or want to start a discussion on the paper or topics discussed within.