Ethics and Computing : Living Responsibly in a Computerized World

All you have to do is watch the news, or be warned not to open your email today, to recognize the necessity for this revised and enhanced edition of this critical work, first published in 1995. We are inundated daily with intellectual property issues and warnings against computer viruses and hackers. Government and law enforcement agency involvement in the security of our computer systems leaves us vulnerable to abuse of privacy, and raises the specter of "Big Brother". Also, many critical systems controlled by computers, such as nuclear power facilities and missile defense systems, are often designed and tested with an over-reliance on computer modeling, which can cause failure, injury or loss of life.

Ethics and Computing, Second Edition promotes awareness of these and other major issues and accepted procedures and policies in the area of ethics and computing, using real-world companies, incidents, products and people. An entire chapter is dedicated to detailed analysis of the major ethical codes relevant to computing professionals: The Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP) code of ethics, IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) code of ethics, the Association of Computing Machinery codes of ethics, and the ACM/IEEE Software Engineering code of ethics.

Ethics and Computing, Second Edition is ideally suited for topical undergraduate courses with chapters and assignments designed to encourage critical thinking and informed ethical decisions. Furthermore, this invaluable book will keep abreast computer science, computer engineering, and information systems professionals and their colleagues of current ethical issues and responsibilities.

About the Editor Kevin W. Bowyer is the author of "Your Call," an ethics and computing column in Computer magazine, and served as chair of the Social, Ethical, Legal and Professional Issues focus group for the Year 2001 Model Curricula for Computing. He has also led workshops on Teaching Ethics and Computing for undergraduate faculty sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Currently, he is editor in chief of IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence and is a member of editorial boards for several other journals. Dr. Bowyer's research interests include image understanding, pattern recognition, and medical image analysis. His research work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Army Medical Research and Material Command, NASA, and other agencies. Presently, Dr. Bowyer is professor of computer science and engineering at the University of South Florida, where he has received numerous distinguished teaching awards. Previously, he was a computer science faculty member at Duke University and the Institute for Informatics at the Swiss Federal Technical Institute in Zurich. Dr. Bowyer is an IEEE Fellow.