From Awareness to Action - Page 6 of 20

It is clear that the study of ethical and social issues in computing is interdisciplinary in nature. The conceptual approach integrates, from the perspective of computer science, the complementary disciplines of philosophical ethics and social science. Ethicists from philosophy and theology, historians, social analysts, sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists have all contributed heavily to the research in this area [3]. Instead of requiring computer science students to learn from these disciplines by taking separate courses in philosophy and sociology, elements from these disciplines need to be incorporated into the core of computer science. "Technologies cannot be divorced from a social framework. Computer scientists need to be educated to understand some of the complex linkages between the social and the technical [9, p. 69]." A conceptual framework for computer ethics can only do its job if it takes into account the interaction of social, ethical and technical concerns.

The intellectual space defined by the three dimensions is summarized in Figure 1[15]. The two dimensions shown in detail are the levels of social analysis and the particular ethical issues that arise in technology. The combination of these two dimensions results in such an overwhelming wealth of research and analysis that it might be difficult to determine where to start. It is the third dimension of computer technology that provides the connection to computer science. What topics, principles, and skills from this array will be relevant to computer science students at the undergraduate level?

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