Computer ethics textbooks: a thirty-year retrospective

As we celebrate the 30th anniversary of SIGCAS, we an reflect on some of our objectives and initiatives s an ACM Special Interest Group during the past three decades. One initiative for which SIGCAS can be especially proud is in having taken a leadership role in advocating for computer ethics education, especially for computer professionals. Through a series of published reports, including the two Project ImpactCS Steering Committee Reports Computing Consequences: A Framework fbr 7~aching Ethical Computing (Huff and Martin, 1995), and Implementing a ]}nth Strand in the Computer Science Curriculum (Martin, et al. 1996) SIGCAS has been influential in raising the awareness, both within and outside of ACM, for a need to include computer ethics education in the computer science curriculum. And through its continued publication of education-related materials in Computers and Socie0/, SIGCAS has provided a forum in which instructors have been able to dialog on issues related to computer ethics education. For example, feature articles focusing on issues such as who should teach computer ethics (see Johnson, 1994) and the role of ethical values in course instruction (see Bellin, 1995) have contributed to debates involving methodological and pedagogical approaches to computer ethics instruction. SIGCAS publications involving computer ethics instruction have also included information about relevant textbooks in the field. For example, excerpts from and reviews of computer ethics textbooks have appeared frequently in Computers and Society over the years. Since 1990, excerpted sections of the following textbooks have been included: Tom Forester and Perry Morrison’s Computer Ethics (March 1990), Deborah Johnson’s Computer Ethics 2nd ed. (December 1993), Chuck Huff and Thomas Finholt’s Social Issues in Computing (December 1994), Rob Kling’s Computerization and Controversy 2nd ed. (June 1996), and Stacey Edgar’s Morality and Machines (June 1997). Numerous reviews of individual computer ethics textbooks as well as some comparative reviews of multiple coursebooks (see, for example, Bergin, 1991; Roth 1996; and Tavani 1996) have also frequently appeared in SIGCAS publications. As we acknowledge our 30th year as a special interest group, and in particular as a professional association that has advocated for computer ethics instruction in the curriculum, perhaps it would be an appropriate time to look back at the kinds of textbooks that were available when the first issue of Computers and Society was published, and to consider some of the ways in which those texts have evolved over the years. Lists of selected texts, in the chronological order in which they were published, are included in Tables 1-3. Whereas Tables 2 and 3 identify textbooks developed specifically for computers, ethics and society courses, entries in Table 1 include mostly general reference sources on issues and topics in technology and socie~ During the time period spanning the publication of books listed in Table 1 there were no computer ethics textbooks as such. However, sources identified in that table were available to instructors who wished to include a course component or module on ethical and sodal issues in computing. For a more extensive list of textbooks and teaching resources available during those years, see Tavani (1995).