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Meta-informatics and ethical issues in computing

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William M. FleischmanAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, Volume 38, Issue 3

Pages 232 - 236

https://doi.org/10.1145/1140123.1140186

Published: 26 June 2006 Publication History

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Abstract

This paper deals with aspects of teaching a course on ethical issues in computer science for third- and fourth-year computer science and computer engineering majors. In addition to engineering concerns - soft and hard - our recent discussions have increasingly centered on public policy issues involving surveillance, access to, use and interpretation of information, and on early access to appropriate instruction in computer and information technology indispensable for productive life and citizenship in the 21st century. In these discussions, students have revealed blind spots with respect to manipulation, misuse, misrepresentation, and distortion of information. Among the difficulties are those associated with reification, "reverse reification", saturation of the channel, especially through the use of so-called "talking points", and outright falsification, misrepresentation, and distortion. These seem to belong to a neglected aspect of our discipline that might be given the name "meta-informatics." My assertion is that "meta-informatics" is an area worthy of consideration, especially in courses or modules devoted to ethical issues in computer and information science.

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Cited By

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Connolly RFedoruk A(2015)Does computing need to go beyond good and evil impacts?Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society10.1108/JICES-10-2014-004513:3/4(190-204)Online publication date: 10-Aug-2015
https://doi.org/10.1108/JICES-10-2014-0045
Brown NXie BSarder EFiesler CWiese E(2023)Teaching Ethics in Computing: A Systematic Literature Review of ACM Computer Science Education PublicationsACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/363468524:1(1-36)Online publication date: 27-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3634685
Scully ZChlipala A(2017)A program optimization for automatic database result cachingACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3093333.300989152:1(271-284)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3093333.3009891
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Meta-informatics and ethical issues in computing
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Computing / technology policy
    1. Censorship
    2. Surveillance
  2. Professional topics
    1. Computing profession
      1. Codes of ethics

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin Volume 38, Issue 3

September 2006

367 pages

ISSN:0097-8418

DOI:10.1145/1140123

Issue’s Table of Contents

ITICSE '06: Proceedings of the 11th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
June 2006
390 pages
ISBN:1595930558
DOI:10.1145/1140124
Conference Chair:
Renzo Davoli
Università di Bologna, Italy
,
Program Chairs:
Michael Goldweber
Xavier University
,
Paola Salomoni
Università di Bologna, Italy

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 26 June 2006

Published in SIGCSE Volume 38, Issue 3

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Connolly RFedoruk A(2015)Does computing need to go beyond good and evil impacts?Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society10.1108/JICES-10-2014-004513:3/4(190-204)Online publication date: 10-Aug-2015
https://doi.org/10.1108/JICES-10-2014-0045
Brown NXie BSarder EFiesler CWiese E(2023)Teaching Ethics in Computing: A Systematic Literature Review of ACM Computer Science Education PublicationsACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/363468524:1(1-36)Online publication date: 27-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3634685
Scully ZChlipala A(2017)A program optimization for automatic database result cachingACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3093333.300989152:1(271-284)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3093333.3009891
Kovács LRobillard SVoronkov A(2017)Coming to terms with quantified reasoningACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3093333.300988752:1(260-270)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3093333.3009887
Krebbers RTimany ABirkedal L(2017)Interactive proofs in higher-order concurrent separation logicACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3093333.300985552:1(205-217)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3093333.3009855
Kobayashi NLozes ÉBruse F(2017)On the relationship between higher-order recursion schemes and higher-order fixpoint logicACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3093333.300985452:1(246-259)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3093333.3009854
Oriogun POgunleye-Johnson B(2012)Computing EducationProceedings of the 2012 African Conference for Sofware Engineering and Applied Computing10.1109/ACSEAC.2012.11(47-54)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ACSEAC.2012.11
Connolly RRößling GNaps TSpannagel C(2011)Beyond good and evil impactsProceedings of the 16th annual joint conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education10.1145/1999747.1999812(228-232)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1999747.1999812
Clear T(2006)Google™ - "do no evil"Working group reports on ITiCSE on Innovation and technology in computer science education10.1145/1189215.1189142(8-10)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2006
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1189215.1189142
Udoh E(2006)Teaching database in an integrated oracle environmentACM SIGCSE Bulletin10.1145/1189136.118917438:4(71-74)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2006
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1189136.1189174
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