Professional Issues in Computing



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Issues

Professional Issues in Computing

  • Issues in Computers and Society

Issues and Professionalism

  • Blay Whitby, 3R345,
  • blayw@.sussex.ac.uk
  • Lectures
  • There are 2 Lectures per week.
  • Wednesday 0900 -1100, ARUN 401
  • It would be a good idea to participate in all of them.
  • Seminars
  • You have one seminar per week.
  • You need to participate in all of them.

Orientation

  • Why study this?
  • Professionalism.
  • You will be involved!
  • What employers expect from graduates.
  • How should we study this?
  • Differences from purely technical subjects.
  • Varying opinions.
  • Many speculations are likely to be be wrong.
  • You may need to acquire new techniques.

Techniques

  • [This is not an exhaustive list]
  • Your aim should be to become able to form your own opinions
  • Develop critical views - requires reading a number of differing writers/viewpoints.
  • Show awareness of counter-arguments.
  • Avoid cliches, slogans, and empty phrases - these are often ways of avoiding the necessity to:-
  • Think.

Some Issues

  • Some comments on predictions.
  • Technological developments.
  • Social implications and consequences.
  • Revolution?
  • Visionaries versus sceptics.
  • Separate the technological from the social.

Some comments on predictions

  • How reliable are the forecasts?
  • Are there too many variables?
  • Is it sensible or is it science fiction?
  • Beware the glib, but empty, metaphors:-
  • 'The Global Village'
  • 'The Paperless Office'
  • 'The Electronic Revolution'
  • Who will decide?

Technological Developments

  • Increase in power (=size, speed, etc)of processors, with a decrease in cost.
  • Better interfaces - Multimedia, Natural language, V.R.
  • Intelligence (" "?) everywhere.
  • Bigger, more comprehensive networks, faster data transfer.
  • Systems that replace humans.

Some Comments on Revolutions

  • Media hype or reality?
  • Power.
  • Revolution = change of those in power.
  • Little evidence of this.
  • Computer workers' status
  • Does I.T. reinforce power structures? ( ie. The opposite of a revolution!)

Some comments on Revolutions

  • How much is changing?
  • Work?
  • Leisure?
  • Values?
  • Is the impact of I.T. evolutionary, rather than revolutionary?
  • Slow?
  • Gradual?
  • Diverse? 

Visionaries versus Sceptics

  • Daniel Bell. - Knowledge = freedom = intellectual advancement.
  • Herbert Simon - Productivity = better quality = better goods and services = more satisfaction.
  • Michie and Johnston - Expert systems will solve all the world's problems.
  • On the other hand,
  • Joseph Weizenbaum. - Computers cannot be a substitute for humans = scapegoats for human failings.;''
  • Neil Frude. - People will prefer machine companions to each;''other = isolation = loss of social skills = no human society.;''

Social implications and consequences

  • 3 views:-
  • 1. Sceptical
  • Computers are (or are about to be) destroying human skills and relationships.
  • We are becoming (or will be) dependent on technologies which we neither like nor understand.

Social implications and consequences

  • 3 views:-
  • 2. Optimistic
  • More information and knowledge will be available to all.
  • Greater access by more people enhances democracy, makes deception more difficult
  • Liberation from boring and dangerous work.
  • 3. Separate
  • Social and technological changes are driven by different and separate processes.

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