Ethics for the Information Age

Rating:
Summary: It covers the IEEE, ACM recommendations for an ethics course
Review: In 2001, a joint committee of the IEEE computer society and the Association for Computing Machinery recommended that every undergraduate computer science degree incorporate 40 hours in the social issues of computing. The report also contains a model syllabus for "CS280, Social and Professional Issues." This book is designed to cover all of the major topics in that outline, and that goal has been achieved. There is also enough additional material and chapter independence so that all adopters will have the flexibility to do it their own way.
The book is split into nine chapters:

*) Catalysts for change.
*) Introduction to ethics.
*) Networking.
*) Intellectual property.
*) Privacy.
*) Computer and network security.
*) Computer reliability.
*) Work and wealth.
*) Professional ethics.

While the coverage is fairly complete, the technical level never rises beyond that which one would expect the experienced computer science student to be able to handle. In my opinion, most computer science students, and quite likely instructors as well, will find the second chapter to be the most difficult to understand. The topics are:

*) Subjective relativism.
*) Cultural relativism.
*) Divine command theory.
*) Kantianism.
*) Act utilitarianism.
*) Rule utilitarianism.
*) Social contract theory.

The author delves fairly deeply into these areas, but since they are the necessary preconditions to understand ethical dilemmas, I do not object to it. However, it is a point that needs to be made in this review. I took two courses in philosophy/ethics as an undergraduate and I found myself going slowly through the chapter. A large number of questions and in-class exercises are given at the end of each chapter.
However, there is one area where the author really fumbled the ball, demonstrating a lack of historical knowledge. On page 335 in the Work and Wealth chapter, there is the statement:

" It also appears modern Americans work harder than the ancient Greeks, Romans or Western Europeans of the Middle Ages. `The lives of ordinary people in the Middle Ages or Ancient Greece and Rome may not have been easy, or even pleasant, but they certainly were leisurely. [9]' In the mid-fourth century the Roman Empire had 175 public festival days. In medieval England holidays added up to four months a year; in Spain, five months; in France, six months.[9]"

A reference is given to justify these statements, but it is most certainly wrong. While I don't dispute that there were many public holidays in ancient Greece and Rome, they were for citizens only, which was a small percentage of the population. The majority of people were slaves, who did the bulk of the labor in those societies and their labor is what made the circuses possible. Nothing really changed in the Middle Ages, the only difference was that the laboring population were called serfs.
Anyone who tries to make the point that people work harder now than in the past should reread the history of the industrial revolution. At that time, most industrial workers put in ten to fourteen hours a day seven days a week, with almost no days off. The managers of industry also readily admitted that the work environment was structured so that the workers were required to move as fast as possible. Working conditions were so difficult and physically demanding that many people were permanently disfigured after a few years on the job.
Despite this reservation, I recommend the book and plan on using it as a text if my proposal for a course in computer ethics is approved.

Rating:
Summary: What are the Ethics of Slanted Writing in an Ethics Book?
Review: Overall: This book is one of the two texts in FSU's COP 3502: "Introduction to Computer Science" course (a required course in their Computer Science degree). It's mostly a waste of time. The first two chapters are of some use because they provide a brief history of computers and a quick introduction to the ethical theories one can use to resolve ethical dilemmas. Unfortunately, chapters 3 through 6 (inclusive) are worthless. They consist of about 190 pages of figuring out why certain obviously wrong activities are wrong (things like sending spam, producing pornography, stealing intellectual property, violating privacy, stealing identities, producing viruses, etc.). The last three chapters might have some merit, though. They cover some of the more general ethical consideration of working in the computer science field. Unfortunately, I stopped reading when the author started bringing up false references to the Florida 2000 election.

Chapters 1 and 2: In general, most of the examples of ethical situation in these chapters are non-computer-related. Since the author specifically talks about this book being an ethics course as adhering to the IEEE's and ACM's "Computing Curricula 2001" standard, its examples ought to be drawn from the Information Systems world. My biggest gripe with these chapters is the obvious liberal slant of the author. He's constantly slipping standard liberal mantras into the text as absolute-truth. I wonder what the ethics is of implying to students that certain things are true when, at best, they're controversial, and at worst, false? Here are some examples of these mantras along with a couple of doctrinally related bad logic:

Page 4: "Refrigerators make it possible for us to keep food fresh for long periods of time. We save time because we don't have to go grocery shopping every day. Unfortunately, freon (sic) leaking from refrigerators has contributed to the depletion of the ozone layer that protects us from harmful ultraviolet rays."

"New communication technologies have made it possible for us to get access to news and entertainment from around the world. However, the same technologies have enabled major software companies to move thousands of jobs to India, China, and Vietnam, putting downward pressure on the salaries of computer programmers in the United States."

"Nuclear power plants create electricity without producing the carbon dioxide emissions that lead to global warming, but they also produce radioactive waste products that must be safely stored for 10,000 years."

Page 57: "The struggle for survival has shifted away from people to the rest of Nature. Overpopulation has created a host of environmental problems, such as the extinction of many species, the destruction of fisheries in the world's oceans, and the accumulation of greenhouse gases. People must change their ideas about what is acceptable conduct and what is not, or they will destroy the planet."

Pages 73, 74: in evaluating Rule Utilitarianism, the author uses the true case of someone releasing an internet worm and someone else releasing a counterworm. The second worm removed the first worm and updated systems with official patches so the first worm (and later, related worms) couldn't propagate. By considering the bad consequences of that specific case (the method is supposed to think about if EVERYONE followed the rule ALL the time, not just in specific cases) and ignoring the benefits to huge numbers of people (practically infinite over time) in reduced spam and fewer viruses/worms, the author comes up with the answer that releasing counterworms is unethical by this rule.

Pages 76-78: In describing the Social Contract theory, the author relates that it originates with Hobbes' philosophy in "Leviathan." Near the end of his description, he gives examples of absolute rights under the Social Contract theory. He states: "For example, there is no situation in which it would be reasonable for another person to interfere with your right to life." If I remember my Hobbes correctly, if a person violates the social contract, his punishment could be to be removed from it. In other words, society can kill people if it determines that they no longer fall under their social contract (i.e., death penalty for heinous crimes).

Page 81: "Suppose we are living in a city experiencing a gasoline shortage. If every car owner uses public transportation two days a week, there will be enough gasoline to go around. I need to decide if I will take the bus two days a week."

And, as noted in my first paragraph, the final deal-breaker in this book was this:

Page 286: "In the November 2000 general election, Florida disqualified thousands of voters because preelection (sic) screening identified them as felons. The records in the computer database were incorrect; the voters had been charged with misdemeanors. Nevertheless, they were forbidden from voting. This error may have affected the outcome of the Presidential election."

At this point, I put the book away. I truthfully feel sorry for the poor students in FSU's CS degree program who are stuck going through a course with this book and a (most probably) liberal professor.

I give it 1 Star out of 5.