Where Are We?

I have a course this term named *Professional Practice in Computer

Science*. It talks about the ethic issues in computer science area.

During the course, our professor read some paragraph from a book named

[Computer

Ethics](http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Ethics-3rd-Deborah-Johnson/dp/0130836990),

written by Deborah Johnson. In the Preface, Johnson mentioned that the

first edition of the book was released when she gave birth to her

daughter about 25 years ago. And now (about 2001), her daughter had

became a teenager and was much comfortable with computers than

herself.

When our professor read this, he asked us “Where are WE?” Deborah

Johnson is a philosopher and is not as good as her daughter at

operating computer. Why all of the social issues about computer

science are discussed by those who are not professional at computer at

all? Lots of times those people, such as lawyers, philosophers or

sometimes computer engineers, make technically wrong ideas. However,

we don’t see many computer scientists sit at the table and talk about

their ideas.

Computer scientists always lock themselves in a dark basement and do

the technical stuff. They have push the computer science forward a

lot, indeed. But they seldom care about how do those techniques affact

to our society.

Our professor’s opinion is like we, as a computer scientist, should go

out from our basement, discuss our right ideas with other people, and

make some effects to the computer science in our society. While I have

an opposite idea.

What I think is the power of people is limited. People who talk about

society in public are most of those people because it their job. A

lawyer or a philosopher are likely to talk with public and persuade

others. But a computer scientist is different. As a scientist, we’d

like to make as mush as affect to our own area, science, instead of

social. Anyone can think about Donald Knuth coming out to talk about

computer ethics when he is suppose to do as much work as possible on

TAOCP?

Anyway, the society belongs to all of us, include computer scientists.

What we need is to so as much as we can in our profession, and leave

the social part to the people who are suppose to do it.

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