Transcript Ina Wagner: “Confronting Ethical Issues of Systems Design

Ina Wagner: “Confronting
Ethical Issues of Systems
Design ...”
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Wagner deals with ethics as a much more
applied concept. Ethics are political.
In software development, problems are
often ethical, not technical.
Uses a scheduling program for hospitals
as a case study.
Wagner (cont. 1)
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Some of the problems that came up:
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Whether a person's use of working time
should be public knowledge
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How to negotiate priorities
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How to deal with the different “cultures”
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Automatic scheduling vs. cooperationsupport
Can these problems be abstracted?
Wagner (cont. 2)
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Autonomy between medical departments
can work against developers.
Engineers have a set of “technical norms”
to guide them. What of computer
scientists?
“Computer scientists are far from forming
a homogeneous profession with welldefined boundaries and a clear set of
standards.”
Wagner (cont. 3)
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When we deal with ethical issues, we
should:
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Identify actors in intercultural dialog
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Admitting and handling conflict.
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Egalitarian values in a hierarchical
organization?
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What of designers own values and norms?
What of the feministic concept of
empathy? Distance?
Wagner (cont. 4)
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In a complex organization, we should
negotiate locally.
What is the third language?
Dahlbom, Mathiassen: “Power
in System Design”
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Case: Telephone company's wants
makes s/w engineer uncomfortable.
“Only the traditional computer expert
really believes in technology as a positive
social force.”
Technological determinism:- technology
guides society.
Dahlbom (cont. 1)
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Social constructivists believe that the role
of a certain technology will be determined
by the social context into which it is
introduced.
Look at how Robert Moses built the
parkways on Long Island.
Is social constructivism favourable to a
democratic society?
Dahlbom (cont. 2)
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Do you believe that technological
determinism implies that society is
shaped by the technologically elite? Is
this degrading to a democratic society?
If engineers are technological
determinists, is it fair to say that they
don't deal with the consequences of their
structures/systems?
Dahlbom (cont. 3)
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Langdon Winner: “The interesting puzzle
in our times is that we so willingly
sleepwalk through the process of
reconstituting the conditions of human
existence.”
Do developers have a moral responsibility
to speak out against faulty software?