33.4 Summary

In this fun lecture, we steered a bit away from core CS61B exam material and discussed a high-level overview of the impacts that students can have on society and on their own lives using the skills obtained in CS 61B and beyond.

We covered specific societal impacts in the realm of economics within the context of industry, and social impacts with how humans in our global civilization interact with one another using the digital products that we can create using our coding skills. Most importantly, we delved into the potential harms to society that our coding skills could have – from the psychological foundations that could be altered on our youth to the reconfiguration of politics and governmental leaders are elected.

With great power comes great responsibility, and it is evermore vital that we consider the deep, all-encompassing question of ethics in creating software for humanity.

With the demand for software engineers and the financial impact that creating software solutions to the worldwide marketplace has, the value added to you as a worker in our society is immense & very fruitful. However, it is important to consider factors beyond just work to create a multifaceted thing called your life. We only work so many hours in the weeks in our lives– so it is incredibly important to ensure that work (and learning CS to become a software engineer, etc.) is just a subpart of what we consider our entire life. Have fun on the journey!