November 11th, Class Essay

11/11 Essay: Read this October 2020 article from UPenn that’s a set of statements by faculty from a broad array of fields on the ways in which data and data science are contributing to or affecting their field with respect to COVID and the pandemic (hat tip to Rhea).

Write 1-2 paragraphs on the following: From what you know about your prospective major, what is a permanent or semi-permanent way the pandemic has affected your field of study or an aspect of culture or society related to your field? Do you believe the change is a net-positive or negative for society and why? What recommendations (if any) would you have for your field moving forward on the issue? For example, if you’re a prospective business major, what are your thoughts on remote work and the use of office spaces and how businesses could think about “where” to work moving forward? Or, if you’re a prospective psychology or sociology major, how has the virus and pandemic changed how people and societies view and react to germs? You have until 10:05.

One impact of the pandemic on the computer science field of study and computer science-related industries is the increase of working from home. Computer scientists can work from home nearly to the same extent or to the same extent and capability as they did in the office. Thus, there were not massive amounts of computer scientists losing their jobs. If anything, there was likely a higher demand for computer scientists and data scientists to handle all of the incoming data regarding COVID-19 and figure out how to make it accessible to the public. I can imagine that the CDC’s website saw dramatic increases in traffic, and so computer scientists were definitely needed in order to deal with the increased volume of traffic on popular health or news sites. Additionally, many companies and schools, such as William and Mary, had to develop ways for people to know how many COVID cases were in their system and built COVID dashboards or specific websites. All of these are positive impacts on those in the field of computer science, as their expertise was needed throughout the pandemic in order to keep systems running smoothly and provide data to the public. I just did some quick research, however, and discovered that one concern with computer scientists, and I’m sure data scientists as well, working from home was that there was an increase in security risks, due to the increase of use of Cloud Computing, which caries security risks. Moving forward, I think that it is important for computer scientists to go back to working in the office, to minimize security risks, but I also think that it is important to allow flexibility for those who need to work from home for safety or other reasons. COVID-19 has led to the positive change of more flexibility with where people work, and because it is possible to work from home as a computer scientist, the benefits of doing so should not be discounted.