CS 3001

CS 3001, formally known as either Computing, Society, and Professionalism or simply Computing and Society, is a 3-credit Computer Science course that satisfies the Ethics requirement for the Computer Science bachelor's degree.

The course covers the foundations of moral decision-making through an introductory study of ethics as a philosophical subfield during the first quarter of the class. Additional approaches to ethics are explored through existing legislation, organizational codes of conduct, and guidelines from influential thinkers. These approaches are applied in a survey of real-world case studies within which students analyze how computing technologies influence society at large.

Topic List

General Topic List

• Deadly Software Errors
  • Therac-25 radiation overdoses
  • Boeing 737 MAX plane crashes
• Do Artifacts Have Politics? - Langdon Winner
• Utilitarianism
  • Act Utilitarianism - Jeremy Bentham
  • Rule Utilitarianism - John Stuart Mill
• Deontology
  • The Categorical Imperative - Immanuel Kant
  • Are There Absolute Moral Rules? - James Rachels
• Social Contract Theory
  • Enlightenment Social Contract Theory - John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rosseau
  • Modern Social Contract Theory - John Rawls
• Stakeholder Analysis
• Virtue Ethics
  • Virtue Ethics - Aristotle, Plato
  • Neo-Aristotelian Virtue Ethics - Various Authors
• Professional Ethics
  • ACM Code of Conduct - ACM
• Privacy
  • Privacy and the Government
  • Privacy and Biological Data
  • The PATRIOT ACT
• Intellectual Property
  • Types of Intellectual Property: Copyrights, Trademarks, Trade Secrets, Patents
  • Validity of Software as Intellectual Property
  • Computer Reliability and Software Warranties
• Visual Argument - Edward Tufte
  • The 1854 Cholera Epidemic
  • The Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster
• Work and Wealth
  • Globalization, Automation, and Telework
• AI, Algorithms, and Bias
• Technology and Race
• Net Neutrality
• Wikipedia and Truth - Amy Bruckman
• Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely

It should be noted that the order of computing topics may be rearranged depending on the instructor of the course. However, the ethical theories - utilitarianism, deontology, social contract theory, and virtue ethics - will always be taught during the first quarter.

Class Structure

To be completed.

Prerequisite Knowledge

To be completed.

Scheduling

To be completed.

Resources

To be completed.