Using history and sociology to teach engineering ethics

An overview is given of the academic discipline of engineering ethics in the United States, describing how the subject has been taught in the US, and suggesting a new method that uses the history and sociology of science and technology to teach ethical issues in engineering. Traditionally, engineering ethicists have focussed on accidents to analyze both ethical conduct and social implications of engineering. The new approach attempts to move beyond this concern with what might be called "disaster ethics" to study the ethical and social aspects of everyday engineering practice     

The Public Health, Safety and Welfare: An Analysis of the Social Responsibilities of Engineers

What obligations does an engineer have to protect the public interest in the creation and use of new technologies? How can the engineer best act so as to fulfill his or her responsibilities to the public? This paper considers these questions from the point of view of social ethics, by means of case studies of engineers in the nuclear power industry. An ethical framework is presented that allows us to define the social responsibilities of engineers. The modes of action generally available to engineers for fulfilling those responsibilities are then analyzed. All of these are judged to be inadequate, leading to the conclusion that unless the decision-making structures for the use of technology are changed, engineers will continue to be frustrated in their ability to ensure the responsible use of technology.     

Sex and stem cell research

This paper discusses the ethical and political issues that stem cell research faces. Stem cell research holds great promise for treating serious diseases but does so by using materials from the very beginning of life. There is a division among different sects of society as some see a important ethical principle being threatened, while others see scientific progress being threatened by religious beliefs. Medical technology brings the benefits we seek, but it also affects social arrangements. New technologies require that we reweave the threads of social life. It must find a home in our institutions, laws, thinking, and values. In this case, the technology has empowered women in substantial ways, giving them freedom from unwanted or unplanned pregnancies. It has also disconnected the traditional relationships among sex, reproduction, and marriage     

Technology management for corporate social responsibility

Expectations of corporations are higher than ever. Investors and other stakeholders consider companies in terms of the "triple bottom line", reflecting financial performance, environmental practices, and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Given the role of top managers in setting the ethical tone and strategic agenda of their corporations - and the role of technology in strategy - can technology management achieve both competitive performance and social responsibility, i.e., "strategic responsibility"? This potential integration is considered in the technology management of eight Internet-oriented companies, specifically for practices integrating the fulfillment of corporate social responsibilities with technology-driven strategies for keeping products competitive, providing the basis for new products, and changing operational conventions.     

Ethical risk assessment: valuing public perceptions

Engineers are confronted with an array of moral issues and dilemmas as the complexity modern technology results in equally complex efforts to assess the accompanying environmental and safety risks. The author examines the connections between engineering ethics, risk communication, and the engineering culture. First moral issues in risk assessment are reviewed and the ethical responsibilities of engineers with respect to risk assessment and risk communication are discussed. The conventional model of risk communication, which holds that only experts possess relevant risk information, is then critiqued, and the findings of social scientists and humanists with respect to the dual importance of expert and public risk information are reviewed. Following a discussion of the prevailing engineering culture, particularly as it relates to the problems involved in risk communication, some suggestions are made for transforming the engineering culture in a manner conducive to more meaningful discussion of risk     

Technology, policy, ethics, and public health: a selectbibliography

The enclosed bibliography, which includes nearly 400 entries, is organized into two main parts. Part One, consisting of Sections 1 and 2, identifies sources that examine technology and policy issues associated with public health. Among the topics considered in the works cited in Part One are risk assessment, genetic and genomic research, and privacy and confidentiality. Part Two, made up of Sections 3 and 4, includes sources that examine ethical issues in public health. Whereas Section 3 lists sources that consider ethical issues in occupational health and safety as well as in environmental health and ecological sustainability, ethical issues related to professional codes of conduct are considered in sources listed in Section 4. Also listed in Section 4 are selected sources on ethical theory and its application. Although the bibliography is fairly comprehensive, it is by no means intended as an exhaustive work     

Courts, technology, and the boundaries of expertise

Contemporary US jurisprudence is confronted with a constellation of issues that, while frequently masked as purely technical in nature, concern fundamental themes such as privacy and freedom of expression. Future court decisions will require an increased recognition of the ethical and social claims presented within technical contexts. This article is a study of comparative motion. On the one hand, there is the realm of technology where change is expected and unceasing. On the other hand, there is the law-embodying a tradition of rules and a methodology of interpretation which alters only slowly. The speed with which technology operates upon society is certainly a partial explanation for its clash with the more measured process of law, but it is not the only reason. The rapid generation of new knowledge is itself a force that challenges the stability of professions and philosophies, shifting claims of expertise among multiple contenders, sometimes with little warning. The power of expertise is not restricted to human beings. Rather than being situated solely within human agency, technology's “expert” ability to influence the decisions of courts is derived from its own character, is concerned with its own ends, and transmits values and purposes that are not necessarily consistent with human values or purposes     

Ethical considerations in engineering design processes

Engineering ethics involves a broad range of (ethical) issues. In this article, we focus on the specific area of engineering ethics pertaining to engineering design. We believe that engineering design constitutes an interesting starting point for ethical issues in engineering, both for educational and research purposes. So far, there has not been much systematic research on ethical aspects in engineering design and on how engineers deal with such aspects. Engineering design is also an interesting topic to research from the point of view of engineering ethics because design is one of the main activities in which engineers are involved. Moreover, technology has social and ethical implications, mainly because of the kinds of products produced, which are the eventual outcomes of design processes. We focus on two ethical aspects of design processes: the formulation of design requirements and criteria, and the acceptance of tradeoffs between different design criteria. When calling an aspect of the design process “ethical”, we have used the following criteria: the aspect of the design process is connected to, or brings about possible negative consequences, for people other than the designers involved; more or less generally accepted values or norms are at stake; and the norms and values of the different engineers involved in the design clash with each other     

Balancing technical and social issues: a new first-year designcourse

The new ABET EC2000 accreditation guidelines call for greater emphasis on social and ethical issues in the education of engineering students. Universities are responding in varied ways - generally through increased liberal arts content and, in a few instances, through design activities, but generally, design education focuses primarily on the technical and process aspects. This is especially true in the new first-year engineering design courses that have evolved in the 1990s. A first-year “Introduction to Engineering Design” course has been developed at the University of Dayton that seeks to achieve a balance between technical, social and ethical issues throughout the design process to help ground the education of engineering students with the ideals of social and ethical responsibility as part of their profession. This grounding has been achieved through interdisciplinary projects, which teach students, through self-discovery, the relevance of social, environmental, cultural, political and ethical factors to their normal engineering functions     

Residential energy monitoring and computerized surveillance viautility power flows

The author notes that all novel technologies have the potential to affect society in a complex manner, with both beneficial and detrimental consequences. He considers an illustrative case study: a nonintrusive appliance load monitoring technique that can provide vital information to help avoid future energy crises, but can also be used for surveillance purposes. He notes that there appears to be a significant potential for the technology to be abused. The danger that the technology might eventually lead to an erosion of civil liberties and privacy rights leaves its developers in an ethical quandary. The author examines how this technology should be controlled     

Teaching professional and ethical aspects of electrical engineeringto a large class

As electrical engineering has expanded and diversified with the technology it creates, it has also more firmly established itself as a well-respected profession that has provided significant benefits to society. Electrical engineering education is continually diversifying to keep step with the profession. For instance, the area of professional and ethical aspects of electrical engineering is increasingly found in electrical engineering programs, either as a stand-alone course or as a topic discussed in conjunction with design (courses). Most view this as a positive development since it is often thought that the focus on professionalism and ethics is likely to help maintain the integrity and respect of the profession as a whole. In this paper we identify resource materials, background information, a syllabus, and outline for teaching a course on professional and ethical aspects of electrical engineering. Special attention is given to issues encountered when this topic is taught to a large class. In particular, it is explained how to turn the large class “problem” into an advantage that can actually enrich the educational process of teaching professional and ethical aspects of electrical engineering     

Ethical issues of life-sustaining technology

Developments in medical technology have given physicians expanded means to sustain human life. In many instances, life sustaining treatments are administered despite the fact that the patient is unlikely to benefit from the medical intervention. Because of technology favoritism in society, life-sustaining technologies influence the availability, financing, and use of existing technologies. Healthcare organizations are attempting to guide treatment decisions by providing physicians and patients with thorough information about the efficacy of technologies. Programs such as hospice care, advance directives, technology assessment, and outcomes research, are reducing the occurrence of futile care. The paper considers how the development of high-tech, life-sustaining treatments present an ethical dilemma concerning equality of access to medical technologies, ethics of usage, cost and legal issues     

Sociotechnical issues for the ubiquitous information society in 2010

Impact of the ubiquitous information technology on our society is so significant that directing technological development and preparing institutional apparatus are quite important and urgent. The present paper elaborates, with the efforts by both humanity and engineering disciplines, to find the sociotechnical issues of ubiquitous information society in 2010 by inspecting social implications of emerging technology as well as social expectations. In order to deliberate the issues, scenarios are developed that describe possible life in ubiquitous information society. The derived issues cover integrating information technology and the human body, producing smart sharable environment, protecting individual rights, fostering new service business, and forming community. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 165(1): 60–67, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.20565     

地理信息系统在区域经济问题研究中的应用

现代地理信息系统(GIS)技术作为一种先进信息处理技术,已经被各行各业广泛应用。在经济地理的分析过程中,应用GIS可视化空间信息处理技术,通过对社会经济数据的分析、描绘、管理,为解决复杂的区域经济问题提供地图表现、空间决策支持和规划等服务。介绍了区域经济地理信息系统中区域空间信息库的设计,经济地理数据的采集、加工、转换、处理,以及系统软件功能的实现等。     

Social informatics and service learning as teaching models

We have proposed a framework to integrate social and ethical issues into science and engineering curricula. We have also shown how such a framework might be implemented across a curriculum, and how it might be applied to the study of a specific scientific problem. Our framework is based on basic foundations of applied engineering ethics, adaptation of the structure of the meta-discipline of social informatics, and the use of a service-learning pedagogy based on Perry's (1981) cognitive-structural model for intellectual development in college students. The structure of the taxonomy of social informatics research and issues offer a well-established framework that can be re-contextualized for many science and engineering fields. Service learning offers a clear model for giving students the opportunity to practice ethical and social concepts imparted to them in the classroom.     

Notes for a histroy of the IEEE society on Social Implications of Technology

This article presents the history of IEEE Technical Activities Board Committee on Social Implications of Technology (CSIT), that was later known as IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology (SSIT). SSIT draws its members from an eclectic variety of engineering specializations, as well as from professions outside engineering. As awareness of ethical and social implications of new technologies rises, it will make sense for more technically focused societies to participate in further collaborative ventures with SSIT. In principle, every member of IEEE should find something of interest in the activities of SSIT, since it is hard to think of a technology without social implications. But the same factor that makes SSIT such an interesting mix of people with various technical and professional backgrounds also means that SSIT membership is usually not the primary reason that professionals join IEEE. Besides this difference between SSIT and most other IEEE societies, there is a basic philosophical difference as well, at least according to some     

智能电网信息化体系架构研究

智能电网是当今世界电力系统发展变革新动向,被认为是21世纪电力系统重大科技创新和发展趋势。为全面提高电网安全运行水平及供电保障能力,实现电网与经济、社会、环境协调发展,架构智能电网信息化体系奠定基础。总结了近年来信息化结构发展水平及涉及的相关技术,为研究智能电网信息化结构平台提供了参考。     

Teaching social responsibility

I define a socially responsible enterprise as one that in some way promotes the general welfare and dignity of humanity and is respectful of the Earth and its finite resources. I have implemented teaching about social responsibility into a freshman-level computer programming class designed for all engineering majors. By means of ethical problem-solving and reflective writing assignments, students are challenged to define and develop their sense of social responsibility at the same time that they are learning engineering fundamentals. Several of the student assignments are based on scenarios adapted from the author's engineering experience. Thus, the emphasis is on ethical dilemmas and issues encountered in daily professional life, including the important one of selecting an employer or project     

Telecommunications, matter, and the formation of value

An examination is presented of how basic aspects of telecommunications and information transfer require a new understanding of the concepts of commodity value and its relationship to public policy. The main focus is on the creation of value in an increasingly information-based economic environment. Determinants of economic value for information commodities are revealed in the analysis of communication channels. The investigation draws upon the general nature of telecommunications and information transfer for principles governing commodity-value formation in both broadcast media and telephone-type resources. These are contrasted with value formation for material commodities. This model has broader implications for the issue of creating information as a social value from a limited range of formats and conventions. it is shown how, at the level of social policy, the role of standard and individual choice are becoming dominant as the realities of an increasingly information-based society have their impact on the values of the culture