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Re: Ethics

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From: Jon Abolins
Date: May 13, 2002 11:02AM

Ethics often gets confused with "social responsibility". Also one of the reason many computer courses may have trouble when they bring up ethics is because there is little dicsussion of ethical views involved. For example, is one approaching the subject from a utilitarian viewpoint or from a viewpoint that says certain absolute values of good exist in themselves?

Sometimes, the disucssion of ethics gets bogged down into "property rights" concerning one's Web site versus "social responsibility." This can miss other points such as truthfulness in communications. (Accessibility can affect that if impediments to access by some visitors gives a misleading a message.)

A special case of ethics regarding accessibilility is with those sites that have tremendous impact upon people's lives. Government sites are of particular concern because inaccessibility, especially that which is by distinct choice, speaks much about the agency's view of power and the citizens.

Getting back to difficulties of discussing ehtics in computer training courses, a big problem can be that many of the students do not see how they can really deal with ethics in the course of their work. A common notion is that one is paid to get the site done, not to be the corporate conscience. This is a false notion for, in many cases, one can apply ethical thinking to the implementation even if not by overt policy.

Just some random thoughts on the matter.

J.D. Abolins

>>> <EMAIL REMOVED> 05/09/02 06:37PM >>>
<snip>
> I invite you either to this list or to me personally (and at some future
> point I will summarise the discussion to this list), to share what to you
> are the ethical issues. Perhaps together we can explore the issues in a bit
> more depth?



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