Debating the morality behind software development

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RE: Debating the morality behind software development

I teach an ethics class to engineers at a large state university, and this sort of lunkheaded response to Booch by the interviewer is something that I unfortunately see mirrored in the thinking of many (but not all) of my students.

Booch is trying to call attention to the ethical dimension of engineering and get people to interrogate how personal ethics interact with and impact industrial, academic, and governmental actions. In other words, to accept the fact that the ethics and foresight of engineers greatly impact social progress or decline more generally. But the interviewer won't accept this, because he sees it as an issue of blame and gets defensive and closeminded at the very suggestion of delineating what is responsible or irresponsible engineering and design. It's too hard for him, and many people, to think about the fact that the software you might be writing today may help to destroy an innocent person's life next year.

So instead the interviewer denies the ethical component, and puts all the aegis for ethical action on managers, bureaucrats, or worse yet, the free market (!), completely, and wilfully, missing the point that the things we decide to create (an how we specifically create them) are in large measure our own responsibility. It may be a hard idea to tackle, with all its infinite permutations and complicated extrapolated outcomes, but it's a necessary task, and any engineer worth his or her salt is already thinking about these issues. Apparently, however, technology journalists are not!

Posted by: mintech   Posted on: 10/15/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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