Ethics for the Information Age

I just took this class for the Fall semester. I learned new information about Ethics for the Information Age. I took this course, as weekender course, that last for 4 Friday evening/all day Saturday.

Quinn's textbook comes off "very good" in a crowded field of competitors. It is broad in its scope, and very up to date in the issues that it raises. The book is not without its flaws: as a philosophy professor, I would have hoped for a clearer discussion of ethical theory and a less mechanical application of those theories to the issues, but these parts of the book are small and can easily be supplemented by outside readings. I also deal with the subjects in a very different order from the book, beginning with the issues of reliability and security that will most concern our CS majors. (Spam is nasty, but it doesn't seem like the best place to start. I doubt that many of our majors will be headed in that direction as professionals.) Of course even a perfect book could not guarantee that students will learn from it-- Learning is also the responsibility of the student. Students of science or engineering who treat this as if it were a science or math text may well come to the conclusion of one reviewer below that its conclusions often seem "obvious"-- but it is a method that is being taught, and not just the answers. Who knows what the big questions will be ten years from now in such a rapidly changing field? That is one reason why the author's first, historical chapter is such a valuable inclusion and should not be overlooked. Students too often take the status quo for granted, and do not realize how much has changed to get us here, and how quickly it has happened. Few such texts deal with this important material, and Quinn does a good job with it. As to alleged bias in the text, that is just nonsense. If you are convinced that J. Edgar Hoover never authorized an illegal wiretap, or that the Patriot Act is uncontroversial, then some of the questions Quinn raises may make you feel uncomfortable. But that is exactly what a good ethics text should do: provoke thought and discussion. I recommend this book as a course text that touches on all of the (currently) key areas of social concern in the CS curriculum in an engaging way. I also hope for an improved second edition that will do the job even better.

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