Ina Wagner:

1
Ina Wagner Confronting Ethical Issues of
Systems Design ...

• 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.

2
Wagner (cont. 1)

• Some of the problems that came up
• Whether a person's use of working time should be
  public knowledge
• How to negotiate priorities
• How to deal with the different cultures
• Automatic scheduling vs. cooperation-support
• Can these problems be abstracted?

3
Wagner (cont. 2)

• 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 well-defined
  boundaries and a clear set of standards.

4
Wagner (cont. 3)

• When we deal with ethical issues, we should
• Identify actors in intercultural dialog
• Admitting and handling conflict.
• Egalitarian values in a hierarchical
  organization?
• What of designers own values and norms?
• What of the feministic concept of empathy?
  Distance?

5
Wagner (cont. 4)

• In a complex organization, we should negotiate
  locally.
• What is the third language?

6
Dahlbom, Mathiassen Power in System Design

• 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.

7
Dahlbom (cont. 1)

• 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?

8
Dahlbom (cont. 2)

• 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?

9
Dahlbom (cont. 3)

• 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?