Computer Ethics (3rd Edition) (Paperback)

by Deborah G. Johnson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

The publisher, Prentice-Hall Humanities/Social Science
Written in clear, accessible prose, this text brings together philosophy, law, and technology to provide a rigorous, in-depth exploration and analysis of a broad range of topics regarding the ethical implications of widespread use of computer technology. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap
PREFACE

With the publication of the third edition of Computer Ethics, I am reminded of the day in 1984 when I received the page-proofs of the first edition. I had just returned home from the hospital after having given birth to my daughter. I had composed the book on an Osborne computer using a word processor—I think it was called WordStar—that has been obsolete for more than 10 years now. Today my daughter, now a teenager, is more comfortable with computers than I am. She spends a good deal of her day sitting in front of a computer screen chatting with friends, doing schoolwork, and exploring the Web. I composed this edition of the book on a laptop computer using a version of MS Word that automatically corrected my misspellings and grammar. And, of course, in writing this edition of the book, I frequently went to the Web to look for resources and check references. While I continue to be cautious in making grand pronouncements about the significance of these technological changes for the quality and character of human lives, the changes that have taken place in these 16 years are awe-inspiring.

As I began writing this edition, it was strikingly clear that my primary task was to address the technological changes that have occurred since the second edition, especially the growth and penetration of the Internet into so many domains of life. What are we to make of Web sites, cookies, data mining tools, customized online services, and e-commerce? I have addressed many of these new issues while at the same time holding on to what I continue to believe are the core issues in computer ethics: professional ethics, privacy, property, accountability, and social implications and values. Indeed, you will see that in Chapter 1, 1 continue to struggle with the question at the heart of the field, what is computer ethics? Are the ethical issues surrounding computers unique? What is the connection between ethics and technology?

Contemplating the connection between technology and ethics raises an interesting and important question: Does the field of computer ethics simply follow the development of computer technology? Should computer ethicists simply react to technological developments? Wouldn't it be better if the sequence were reversed so that technological development followed ethics? Historically, the field of computer ethics has been reactive to the technology. As I explain in Chapter 1, new technological developments create new possibilities and the new possibilities need to be evaluated. As in the last edition, I build on the idea in Jim Moor's seminal piece "What Is Computer Ethics?" (1985) that new technologies create policy vacuums. The task of computer ethics, he argues, is to fill these policy vacuums. In a sense, the ethical issues are the policy vacuums, and policy vacuums are created when there is a new development or use of computer technology.

On the other hand, I want to suggest that it would be better if at least some of the movement were in the other direction—technology following ethics. Suppose, that is, we lived in a world where ethicists (or anyone, for that matter) identified potentially unethical situations or arrangements or ethically better possibilities, and engineers and computer scientists went to work designing technologies to change or remedy or improve the situation. I can think of a few examples when this has occurred, but only a few. Arguably, privacy-enhancing technologies and anonymous re-mailers are cases in point. Perhaps freeware and shareware are also examples. For the most part, however, the ethical issues have followed, rather than led, the technology. Here in very broad brushstrokes is my understanding of the evolution of the field of computer ethics, especially in the United States. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

In the decades immediately following World War II, ethical concerns were raised about computers, though these concerns were only vaguely expressed and articulated. One of the most salient concerns was that computers threatened our notion of what it means to be human because computers could do the very thing that was considered unique to humans, rational thinking. There was much discussion of artificial intelligence. There was some fear (and fascination with the idea) that computers might take over decision making from humans. I am thinking here of the movie 2001 but the theme also ran through science fiction literature, for example, in Issac Asimov's short stories. Somewhat later, Jim Moor picked up on this theme and wrote an analytical article, "Are There Decisions That Computers Should Never Make?" (1979).

It could be argued that those very early concerns about computers were not exactly ethical in character. For example, no one explicitly argued that it was immoral to go forward with the development of computers because of the threat to our concept of human beings. And the science fiction literature did not suggest that it was immoral to turn over decision-making power to computers. Rather, the implicit argument seemed to be that there would be terrible consequences—possible catastrophes and degradation of human life—were decision making to be turned over to computers.

These concerns did not come from an effect arising from the use of computers; they arose from the mere idea of computers. The very idea of a technology that could think or do something very close to it was threatening to our understanding of what it means to be human.

Ironically, it could be argued that this idea, the idea that computers do what humans do, has turned out to be rich in its influence on human thinking about thinking, rather than a threat. The model of human thought that computers provide has spawned the thriving new field of cognitive science and changed a number of related disciplines. (See for example, Bynum and Moor, 1999.)

In the late 1970s, the ethical issues began to be more clearly articulated in the works of Joseph Weizenbaum (19'79) and Abbe Mowshowitz (1976), and it was in this period that the Privacy Protection Commission di