HOW COMPUTER PROFESSIONALS CAN HELP MAKE OURS A BETTER WORLD

摘要

My thesis here is this: Neither mere technical professionalism on the part of computer and information experts, any more than mere philosophizing on the part of philosophers, will solve important ethical and social problems. Only activism, in the tradition of the American Pragmatist philosophers John Dewey and George Herbert Mead, has a chance of doing so. I will not attempt a defense of this thesis. I will merely show how my thesis might unfold within the framework of some examples. To begin, 1 will deal with two examples, citing Richard Spinello on threats in the computer age to personal privacy, and Lawrence Lessig, an advocate of open code. The key concept here for those unfamiliar with my approach is this: "activism in the tradition of the American Pragmatists"; and it assumes some familiarity with these philosophers, which I obviously cannot provide in this article. But the key issue is this: for them there is no split between a philosopher's professional work and his social and public life-unlike so many other philosophers in the USA and throughout the world. If philosophy has no social relevance, it's a purely academic affair; and that's not good enough for them. What I am recommending here is that computer professionals take that same attitude to their work. Then too, what I mean by "ethical and social problems" is issues outside the range of technical professional work; these are typically recognized by the urgency attached to particular issues in your neighborhood or mine, locally, regionally, nationally, even internationally if one thinks he or she can effectively join with others working on the issues. There are two key aspects here: one is the urgency that people attach to solving these social problems, and the second is their connection to technical work. I wouldn't urge computer professionals to be concerned about poverty, for example, unless there were a clear connection between computers and poverty. (Actually, there are several such connections, but spelling them out would require another whole article.) 1 assume that readers will already be familiar with many such "techno-social issues", as they are commonly spoken of.