User manual

15. Societal Issues
A part of being a student at Santa Clara University is understanding how our work
affects our society. The following are various societal issues and how our project affects
each one.
Ethical: The biggest ethical question with our project is the storage of people’s
phonebooks and the privacy of the phonebooks and their use. While the system operator
may guarantee the confidentiality of each person’s phonebook, some people may still be
uneasy of having other people store their personal phonebook. These stored phonebooks
may also become the desire of governments and if demanded, may have to be handed
over to a government agency. These ethical concerns would not arise if the user kept
their phonebooks only on their own phone and not in our Centralized Phonebook
Database.
Social: This system may have an additional impact on people’s memorization of phone
numbers, or the lack there of. Most people currently do not memorize phone numbers
but this system may increase the number of people who do not memorize phone numbers.
Political: As mentioned in the Ethics section, the information in the Centralized
Phonebook Database could come under scrutiny by governments. If the governments
wanted the contents of the phonebooks in the system, the system administrator would
have to decide weather or not to succumb to government demands.
Economic: The Centralized Phonebook Database would have a minor impact on
economics. The phone companies implementing this system would have to put in some
development time to create a website, change their voicemail systems, and create the
storage for the phonebooks. However, these costs would be very little compared to the
benefits achieved by the system. On the user end, users might be charged a nominal fee
for the ability to use the system or it may be added as a free feature.
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