The present essay includes an overview of key milestones in the development of computer ethics (CE) as afield of applied ethics. It also describes the ongoing debate about the proper scope of CE, as a subfield both in applied ethics and computer science. Following a brief description of the cluster of ethical issues that CE scholars and practitioners have generally considered to be the standard or "mainstream" issues comprising the field thus far, the essay speculates about the future direction of CE and describes some theoretical and practical questions that will likely arise. We are discussing no small matter, but how we ought to live. Socrates (in Plato's Republic, Book 1:352d) Ethics is serious, and very difficult.... [It] is about human beings ... in the human pursuit of...a standard of right conduct or virtue. Lisa H. Newton (1989, pp. 254-55)
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