LEVELS OF JUSTIFICATION FOR THE STUDY OF COMPUTER ETHICS

• Level One
• Level Two
• Level Three
• Level Four
• Level Five
• Level Six

From weaker to stronger, there are at least six levels of justification for the study of computer ethics.

Level One

We should study computer ethics because doing so will make us behave like responsible professionals.

At worst, this type of rationale is a disguised call for moral indoctrination. At best, it is weakened by the need to rely on an elusive connection between right knowledge and right conduct. This is similar to the claim that we should study religion because that will cause us to become more spiritual. For some people, perhaps it may, but the mechanism is not reliable.

Level Two

We should study computer ethics because doing so will teach us how to avoid computer abuse and catastrophes.

Reports by Parker,[12] Neumann,[13] Forester and Morrison[14] leave little doubt that computer use has led to significant abuse, hijinks, crime, near catastrophes, and actual catastrophes. The question is: Do we get a balanced view of social responsibility merely by examining the profession's dirty laundry? Granted, a litany of computer "horror stories" does provide a vehicle for infusing some ethical content into the study of computer science and computer engineering. Granted, we should all work to prevent computer catastrophes. Even so, there are major problems with the use of conceptual shock therapy:

• The cases commonly used raise issues of bad conduct rather than good conduct. They tell us what behaviors to avoid but do not tell us what behaviors are worth modeling.
• As Leon Tabak has argued, this approach may harm students by preventing them from developing a healthy, positive and constructive view of their profession.[15]
• Most horror stories are admittedly rare and extreme cases, which makes them seem correspondingly remote and irrelevant to daily professional life.
• Persons who use computers for abusive purposes are likely to be morally bankrupt. There is little we can learn from them.
• Many computer catastrophes are the result of unintended actions and, as such, offer little guidance in organizing purposive behavior.
• A litany of horror stories does not itself provide a coherent concept of computer ethics.

Level Three

We should study computer ethics because the advance of computing technology will continue to create temporary policy vacuums.

Long-term use of poorly designed computer keyboards, for example, exposes clerical workers to painful, chronic, and eventually debilitating repetitive stress injury. Clearly employers should not require workers to use equipment that will likely cause them serious injury. The question is: What policies should we formulate to address problems of long-term keyboard use? New telephone technology for automatic caller identification creates a similar policy vacuum. It is not immediately obvious what the telephone company should be required to do, if anything, to protect the privacy of callers who wish to remain anonymous.

Unlike the first- and second-level justifications I have considered and rejected, this third-level justification does appear to be sufficient to establish computer ethics as an important and independent discipline. Still, there are problems:

• Since policy vacuums are temporary and computer technologies evolve rapidly, anyone who studies computer ethics would have the perpetual task of tracking a fast-moving and ever-changing target.
• It is also possible that practical ethical issues arise mainly when policy frameworks clash. We could not resolve such issues merely by formulating more policy.

Level Four

We should study computer ethics because the use of computing permanently transforms certain ethical issues to the degree that their alterations require independent study.

I would argue, for example, that many of the issues surrounding intellectual property have been radically and permanently altered by the intrusion of computer technology. The simple question, "What do I own?" has been transformed into the question, "What exactly is it that I own when I own something?" Likewise, the availability of cheap, fast, painless, transparent encryption technology has completely transformed the privacy debate. In the past, we worried about the erosion of privacy. Now we worry about the impenetrable wall of computer-generated privacy afforded to every criminal with a computer and half a brain.

Level Five

We should study computer ethics because the use of computing technology creates, and will continue to create, novel ethical issues that require special study.

I will return to this topic in a moment.

Level Six

We should study computer ethics because the set of novel and transformed issues is large enough and coherent enough to define a new field.

I mention this hopefully as a theoretical possibility. Frankly, after fifteen years, we have not been able to assemble a critical mass of self-defining core issues. Joseph Behar, a sociologist, finds computer ethics diffuse and unfocused.[16] Gary Chapman, when he spoke to the Computers and Quality of Life Conference in 1990, complained that no advances had been made in computer ethics.[17] There are various explanations for this apparent (or real) lack of progress:[18]

• Computer ethics is barely fifteen years old.[19] Much of its intellectual geography remains uncharted.
• So far, no one has provided a complete and coherent concept of the proper subject matter for computer ethics.
• We have wrongly included in the domain of computer ethics any unethical act that happened to involve a computer. In the future, we must be more careful to restrict ourselves to those few acts where computers have an essential as opposed to incidental involvement.
• Because computer ethics is tied to an evolving technology, the field changes whenever the technology changes. For example, the use of networked computers presents moral problems different from those presented by the use of standalone computers. The use of mouse-driven interfaces raises issues different from those raised by keyboard-driven interfaces, particularly for people who are blind.
• We adopted, from clever philosophers, the dubious practice of using highly contrived, two-sided, dilemmatic cases to expose interesting but irresolvable ethical conflicts. This led to the false perception that there could be no progress and no commonality in computer ethics. New research may cause this perception to fade.[20]
• We have remained focused for too long on the dirty laundry of our profession.

On a hopeful note, the ImpactCS Steering Committee chaired by C. Dianne Martin is halfway through a three-year NSF-funded project that will likely generate a highly coherent picture of how the computer science curriculum can address social and ethical issues. ImpactCS intends to publish specific curriculum guidelines along with concrete models for implementing them.[21]

[12]Parker, D. Computer Crime: Criminal Justice Resource Manual, 2nd edition. National Institute of Justice, Washington, D.C., 1989.
[13]Neumann, P. Computer Related Risks. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, New York, 1995.
[14]Forester, T., and Morrison, P. Computer Ethics: Cautionary Tales and Ethical Dilemmas in Computing. MIT Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 1990.
[15]Tabak, L. Giving engineers a positive view of social responsibility. SIGCSE Bulletin 20, 4 (1988), pp. 29-37.
[16]Behar, J. Computer ethics: moral philosophy or professional propaganda? In Technology in People Services: Research, Theory and Applications, Leiderman, M., Guzetta., C., Struminger, L., and Monnickendam, M., Eds. The Haworth Press, New York, 1993, pp. 441-453.
[17]Chapman, G., in response to a luncheon address by Perrole, J., Political and social dimensions of computer ethics. Conference on Computers and the Quality of Life, George Washington University, Washington, D.C., September 14, 1990.
[18]See Gotterbarn, D. Computer ethics: responsibility regained. In National Forum: the Phi Kappa Phi Journal 71, 3 (1991), pp. 26-31.
[19]I refer to the academic discipline of computer ethics as defined in Maner (1980).
[20]Leventhal, L., Instone, K., and Chilson, D. Another view of computer science: patterns of responses among computer scientists. In Journal of Systems Software (January, 1992).
[21]Integrating the ethical and social context of computing into the computer science curriculum: an interim report from the content subcommittee of the ImpactCS steering committee. In Proceedings of Ethicomp95: An International Conference on the Ethical Issues of Using Information Technology 2, Rogerson, S. and Bynum, T., Eds. De Montfort University Press, 1995, pp. 1-19. For further information on the ImpactCS project, contact Dr. Chuck Huff in the Psychology Department at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota 55057 USA (huff@stolaf.edu).