Customer Reviews

Computer Ethics (3rd Edition)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

As another student who was made to read this book for a university, I also found the text to quite repetitive. The points the author is making is spread over 10 pages or more, which makes it hard to focus on the substantive parts. This book is better suited for a philosophy major interested in technology, not a computer scientist interested in philosophy. The book tends to get "muddled" itself by introducing broad topics relating to technology which lead to seemingly off-topic tangents. Much of this book isn't noticably insightful either, falling under the "common sense" category of philosophical reasoning. The writing is clear, I'll give the author that, but by the end, you felt like you took this extremely long journey without getting anywhere. Seek enlightenment elsewhere.

I have to read this book for a college class. I've only read the first two chapters, but I agree with the other reviews. The content is easy to understand, the author makes some good points. This book can be thought provoking, but overall, it's pretty boring and repetitive.

This book is painful to read. The writing is clear, but it is so boring and repetitive that I can barely bring myself to pick it up. It seems like a majority of the time she rambles on about issues that aren't even specific to technology, and are, as another reader suggested, common sense. Unfortunately I have to read this book, since I am yet another CS major taking a required course in ethics related to technology. The subject isn't bad, the book is.

Deborah Johnson is a philospher who thinks deeply about computer ethics. I use this book to teach computer ethics to students who aren't computer scientists or philosophers. Johnson has a useful mix of philosophical principles and technical details. Several "scenarios" (cases) are used to illustrate computer ethics problems. The only reason I rate this as a 9 and not a 10 is that it needs updating; there needs to be more discussion of the web. But even in its present form this book is concise, clever, and profound. I recommend it highly.

While the book has a few interesting and thought-provoking examples, by far the majority of the pages in the book contain endless explanations of trivial arguments for non-existing issues. As a student who has read the book from cover from cover as part of an ethics class, I can confirm that all of the book's contents could be summarized, without losing any details that matter, on about two pages when the bloat were to be removed. The fact that the highest rated review of this book on Amazon has been made by one of the co-authors of the book should only further stress the extremely low quality that one should expect when reading this not so fine sample of computer ethics.
The most fun I've had with this book was using it to heat my barbeque on a sunny day after passing the final exam.

There aren't a whole lot of books on computer ethics yet, and this is one of the better ones. It's definitely a topic of study that needs more focus in today's world, and if you're interested at all, this is the text to pick up. Johnson does a good job of explaining philosophical theory (no surprise, as she is a philosophy professor) and analyzes many interesting case examples.

If you intend to be a computer professional someday, it could be useful to know what you might be getting yourself into. This book will give you some food for thought in the ethics of cutting-edge technology. It is quite well organized and not boring, which is better than I can say for about 95% of the textbooks I've had to read. Johnson takes a strong position on some points of debate that could actually go either way, so you might not always agree with her, but she does provide good reasoning to back up the claims.

The big downside of this book is its price- it's ridiculous. This is a short paperback with an intimidatingly small typeset, and no illustrations of any sort. I really don't see why it has to cost so much. Someone is certainly making a killing off it! Is that ethical?

I'm double majoring in Philosophy and Communication, so I thought that this was going to be a great book for my Computer Ethics class. Our assignments consisted of writing responses to each chapter. I was so bored only a few pages in that my responses focused on those pages and completely left out the rest of the chapter.

Having said that, if you don't read any other chapter, read "Chapter 5: Privacy". This chapter is great for debate and is VERY thought provoking. I actually read all of this one. There are so many services that people can go to, where they can access info about you. Is that ethical?

The good and bad thing about ethics in general, is that there usually isn't a right or wrong answer. This can also be a problem in that some people feel very strongly about an issue and refuse to even view it from another's perspective.

This book was required for my Computers & Philosophy class. It's a decently informative book, but the author doesn't write it in a way that's easy to understand. Most philosophy books are similar, but others that I've read have provided small indecies or at least some way of defining terms. By the time you finish reading a paragraph you've already forgotten what she was trying to say in the first place. If you're familiar with reading philosophy books, its great and informative, but if it's your first I would not recomend it.

This book looks at some of the various issues surrounding computer ethics today. It gives an impetus to practice ethics in Information Technology and how the Internet changes the way we can conduct business transactions.

This rather simple book leads one to appreciate the full extent of computers within ethics. At least, I hope it has that major areas covered. My professor chooses it for two web based courses in philosophy and it was fun to read. If your going to buy it, I think the fact that your on the Internet, is enough of a reason that I can guess you'll get something out of this book.