Essay: Good, evil and technology. A fun philosophical inquiry
Are you a good person? How do you know? Most of us set our bar for good and bad awfully low. Unless you’re kicking puppies and stealing lunches from homeless children, you probably think you’re doing all right. But not being bad is not the same as being good. And when it comes to making things like software and websites the same rules apply.
You should check more recent Computer Science programs. I know that at the University of South Florida, where I got my BS in CS in 2001, a mandated senior course was “Computer Ethics”. In this we discussed some very traditional ethical problems in engineering (i.e. the Challenger disaster) and also more modern technological problems, encryption, napster at the time, The FBI wiretapping tool had just come out so that was discussed a lot also. And there is a code of ethics published by IEEE-CS and ACM. Your essay definitely brings up good points, things that everyone needs to keep in mind, but ethics in this field aren’t as absent as you alluded.
Good points – I did poke around a few programs beore finishing the essay and didn’t find much, but I admit I could have looked harder than I did.
If anyone has other specific references or mentions of ethics courses in CS programs please comment.
BYU has one too, a requirement for a CS degree. The department told us it’s necessary for accreditation.