Sanford S. Levy
History & Philosophy
MSU-Bozeman
Those of us who teach undergraduate courses in applied ethics are constantly seeking new topics, and new books on old topics, for our classes. Computer Ethics, by Forester and Morrison, is certainly worth a try. It is generally entertaining and informative and has a number of strong points. But one should be of some of its idiosyncrasies and possible flaws.
The book is divided into eight chapters dealing with computer crime software theft, hacking and viruses, computer unreliability, privacy, AI and expert systems, and computerizing the workplace. There is no general bibliography, but each chapter has a substantial number of references, drawn both from the popular press and from more specialized academic sources. Each chapter ends with a "Suggestion for Further Discussion" which might also be suitable for paper topics; There is an appendix on Star Wars, but other additional appendixes would have been useful, e.g., one which included the codes of ethics put out by professional organizations assoCiated with computers, atopic only mentioned in passing by the authors.
Computer Ethics offers a wealth of information and examples. Those who are unaware of how deeply our modern world is tied into the computer have a lot to learn from it, as do those who are unaware of the dangers this opens, such as computer thefts, computer failures leading to loss of great sums of money and even to death, and so on. We wonder about what happens to all that information about us stored in a nearly endless array of computers, and how false information can plague us for years.
But the book is flawed. For me, the main flaw runs through several of the early chapters. These chapters lack systematic discussion about how we might solve the problems raised about computers or even a general framework (or set of frameworks) for thinking about them usefully. The student is often presented with some anecdotes, some facts and figures, and is then thrown the job of dealing with them. In this respect, the later chapters are quite different. This may reflect the fact that different chapters are written by different authors; perhaps one author is more theoretically inclined than the other. However, we are not told exactly how the work was divided up.
A study of social problems at the university level should help students see that, though we may never be able to solve them, we can nevertheless think about them systematically and deeply. We can do more than merely "raise" issues. For example, I encourage students to see that the points they are making about a particular issue are of a certain kind, say, utilitarian or Kantian. This allows them to better understand their own perspectives and the resources available for dealing with issues from that perspective. It also allows them to step back and ask questions about the general perspective they are assuming, for example, "Do I really want to take this general point of view?" By studying not only how to use such points of view, but the reasons people have found for adopting or rejecting them, the student attains whatever wisdom modern moral philosophy has to offer.
One way to attain this goal is to begin with a general introduction in which a variety of general approaches to social issues are outlined and discussed. Computer Ethics does not do this. Nor does it try to develop these general tools in the course of more particular discussions. Indeed, the key terms and names so dear to the philosopher do not even appear in the index. This raises the issue of whether or not one can usefully study "ethical dilemmas" (which the title declares the book to be about) without the standard philosophical tools for ethical analysis. One probably can. For there are many perspectives besides the philosophical for studying social problems and I myself am interested in the perspectives of sociologists, legal theorists, political scientists and all the other -ists that have distinctive points of view and contributions to make. This is particularly so since many of the ethical dilemmas that are discussed in the book call for more than philosophical analysis, e.g., legal analyses.
However, through the first sections of the book, we do not get theoretical perspectives in a very full way. It consists of basic information and what the title of the book declares to be "Cautionary Tales." We are told story after story of computer thefts and computer failures, we are given various facts and figures about how widespread this or that problem happens to be. Much of this is quite valuable. We do stand up and take notice. Most of us are horribly ignorant, for example, about computer unreliability . It is valuable to call our attention to the fact that since 1982, 22 US servicemen have died in five separate crashes of the UH-60 Blackhawk utility helicopter because of flawed computer technology. It is valuable to know that of $6.8 million in federal software projects, most was never used, just one project worth less than $100,000 was used as delivered, an d just $200,000 worth was used after substantial modification. It is worth knowing that in 1988 there were six systems failure at the huge London Heathrow airport despite the use of some seventy full-time specialists to keep it going. These failures impose huge costs in time, money, and often in life, as when a software error caused the "therac 25" X-ray machine incorrectly to deliver huge amounts of harmful radiation to a number of patients.
Potentially useful as all this information is, the early parts of the book do not provide much guidance. Often, we are not given the authors' opinions about how to deal with the issues, nor how others have. For example, in the chapter on hacking and viruses, we are given lengthy discussions of what hacking is (including a list of seven different definitions of a hacker), techniques used to break into computers (the main one being just guessing passwords since, we are told, there is amazing lack of variation--"sex" being quite common in the U.S.), an explanation of such destructive programs as worms, Trojan horses and time bombs, and a wealth of examples of hacks, great and small. Finally, at the end of this discussion, we get a brief three page "discussion" of "ethical issues." Here, a few significant issues are raised, e.g., we are asked "What right does a company have to hold information on individuals?" A fine question. But surely we want more than to just raise it. No doubt, we cannot expect this, or any text book, to answer our difficult questions for us. But some guidance in how to think about the issue might have helped, whether the student ultimately accepts or rejects that guidance.
Indeed, the failure to take a more theoretical approach has an impact on the facts presented as well. For example, a better discussion of cost-benefit analysis would have made clear that it is not enough to simply question the use of (say) expert systems in medicine by pointing out the possibility of misdiagnoses and misrecommendations by such systems. It is valuable to know that a computer mistakenly instructed hospital staff to administer such a large dose of pain relieving drugs that the patient died after a successful, routine surgery. But it would be just as valuable to know about the cases in which purely human error, unmediated by machine, lead to similar deaths. No evaluation of medical expert systems can take place without this further information. This would have been clear with the aid of some sort of theoretical system for evaluating technology.
As the book progresses, we find deeper discussions of the issues. Though still introductory in character, these later discussions are serviceable for lower level courses. Indeed, some chapters become quite philosophical. For example, the chapter on AI outlines some of the recent philosophical debates about the possibility of genuinely intelligent computers. The student is introduced to Turing tests and Searle's Chinese Room argument. And the final chapter on computerizing the workplace offers a nice statement of many important views and arguments as well as plenty of interesting facts and figures.
Only some will consider the nontheoretical approach of the first part of the book to be a flaw. Some instructors might prefer to present "theory" themselves, and some might not feel it is valuable at all. Indeed, some might prefer the earlier sections to the more theoretical and argumentative later chapters. I suppose there is something to be said for the idea that sometimes it is valuable to give students a bunch of facts and figures and then to say, "Go to work."