These are things – don’t you like
that highly technical nomenclature I use – that are related to our topics of
discussion and may be of help as you do the assignments and explore the area of
engineering ethics. All kinds of
“things” may show up here – links, short descriptions, and of course “Supplemental
Readings.” I know it is all supplemental
reading in a way. However, I will try to
separate out the true supplemental reading material (extra journal articles and
other references) into a separate area below and keep the top area for the little
things that keep it all interesting.
1. Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility -- If you follow that link it will take you to their home page. This is an interesting group that came together informally at Xerox PARC and Stanford in 1981 and now is an international organization. The top of their homepage states: “providing the public and policymakers with realistic assessments of the power, promise, and problems of information technology. CPSR members work to direct public attention to critical choices concerning the applications of information technology and how those choices affect society.” It is a good place to go to find other professionals expressing opinions about how information and communication technologies should and should not be used.
2.
Electronic Frontier
Foundation – This link will take you to their homepage. To give you a feel for what this organization
is like he is the beginning of their mission statement: “If
3. Philip Zimmerman – When it comes to cryptography, especially its use by the general public, there is probably no more famous person the Philip Zimmerman. This is his web site. Of particular interest with respect to cryptography and ethics might be the section “Letters from Human Rights Groups.”
1. We have spent some time discussing a couple of current “ethical issues” and beginning to exercise our skills in ethical analysis. The articles we discussed can be found using the following links:
A. Electronic Frontier Foundation’s article on the proposed database for the Transportation Security Administration is at http://www.eff.org/Privacy/TIA/20030318_capps_pr.php
B. Some
additional perspectives on the issue of security for air transportation can be
found on Wired at http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,58386,00.html
and
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,58332,00.html
C. The article from Out-law.com concerning the ex-Intel employee who e-mailed all of Intel is located at http://www.out-law.com/php/page.php?page_id=judgessplitoverin1049370906&area=news
D. An
update on the Intel case is available from Wired news at http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,58330,00.html
2. The field of engineering ethics is still growing and maturing; one of the new areas that are being examined is the intersection of ethics and design. Design is one of the areas where an engineer can have a tremendous impact on the product and through that on the people who use the product. The corollary is that this is also a place where ethical considerations could have a large impact too. So here a couple of articles that look at how to start incorporating ethical considerations into the design process.
A. When Social Meets Technical: Ethics and the design of social technologies by Patrick Feng is about building a highway, but the paper addresses “some of the promises and perils in designing “social” technologies, i.e., technologies that explicitly address social concerns such as freedom and privacy.”
B. Using Ethics Problems to Teach the Design Method by John A. Pearce turns the tables on us. It actually teaches design by using ethics(!) instead teaching design and then telling people to be ethical about it.
C.
Design as Cultural Diaspora Preserving Indigenous Forms
During Technological Transfer by David C Stairs [Designer],
3. We could probably spend the quarter looking at ethics and safety, reliability, quality, risk and related topics and cases… Instead here are a couple of articles to give you a broader view of quality and ethics.
A. How Good is Good Enough by Collins et al is subtitled “An ethical analysis of software construction and use.” I will just leave it at that other than to add that it reminds us again that what we are really designing are socio-technical systems, not technical systems.
B. Software Quality: The Elusive Target by Kitchenham and Pfleeger asks what we mean when we say “quality.” It looks at it from an engineering point of view, ask yourself is there anything missing? Does the article incorporate an ethical stance as well?
And risk is a definite consideration. Here is the article we discussed that describes doing “telerobotic” surgery using a VPN.
C. Telerobotic Surgery a First by Allison Dunfield,
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