<story><title>Mozilla Wants Young People to Consider ‘Ethical Issues’ Before Taking Tech Jobs</title><url>https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxenxx/mozilla-wants-young-people-to-consider-ethical-issues-before-taking-jobs-in-tech</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>_bxg1</author><text>I took one of those courses; it wasn&amp;#x27;t intellectually stimulating and it felt like a condescending, corporate-mandated seminar. Even the professor was just going through the motions. But it doesn&amp;#x27;t have to be that way, that&amp;#x27;s just how it tends to play out.&lt;p&gt;What we need are not &amp;quot;ethics in tech&amp;quot; courses, but for people &lt;i&gt;in&lt;/i&gt; tech to get more exposure to general &lt;i&gt;humanities&lt;/i&gt; education. Require everyone getting a degree at your university - computer science majors included - to read and discuss classic literature, history, and philosophy. Exercise the parts of their brain that deal with questions whose answers can&amp;#x27;t be reduced to code. Ethics cannot be covered by a pamphlet of tech-specific rules; to act ethically, a person needs perspective on human nature and on what it means to be a member of society.</text></item><item><author>herbstein</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m just starting my 6th (and last) semester of my bachelor degree. During the semester we are exploring the ethics and morality of the modern computing evolution. The exploration includes the difference between publishers and editors, going back to basics of the &amp;quot;what and why&amp;quot; of privacy, and how companies exploit our (lack of) privacy to gain further growth.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately it&amp;#x27;s a course a lot of my classmates have expressed disdain for. To them it sounds more like a &amp;quot;gender-studies course&amp;quot; (their words) than a course for &amp;quot;super serious no-bullshit smart people&amp;quot; (my interpretation). I&amp;#x27;m hoping the readings will have them reconsider and realize how important considering the ethical implications of their programs.&lt;p&gt;As an example: a friend and a classmate works for $bigcorp. He had an idea for an employee engagement system. The idea was that every employee had a digital avatar that follows them around on the premises. So (as an example) when they go to the coffee machine their avatar high-fives the avatar of another person who&amp;#x27;s also getting coffee. This, as you can imagine, requires tracking the movement of employees to a fairly high degree. The project got two months into development before the &amp;quot;right&amp;quot; person heard about it, raised a fuzz, and got the project cancelled.&lt;p&gt;Neither my friend nor my other classmates see the problem with the precise tracking of the every move of every employee - that scares me a lot.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Balgair</author><text>If anyone here is looking for a good overview of &amp;#x27;the liberal arts&amp;#x27;, I cannot more highly suggest &lt;i&gt;The Harvard Classics&lt;/i&gt;, specifically the 15-minute a day reading guide : &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.myharvardclassics.com&amp;#x2F;categories&amp;#x2F;20120612_1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.myharvardclassics.com&amp;#x2F;categories&amp;#x2F;20120612_1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;For example: Jan 23rd&amp;#x27;s reading is on Pascal and the art of persuasion:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Pascal, the keen-minded philosopher and mathematician, fathomed the human traits of man&amp;#x27;s nature with the same accurate measurements which made him famous in the realm of geometry. Read his searching analysis of man&amp;#x27;s conceit.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Though the year&amp;#x27;s effort is not necessarily an ethics course, per se, the sum is a &lt;i&gt;fantastic&lt;/i&gt; grounding in ethics (among many others). When I did the full year, I could not help but look up the authors and works in more detail on wikipedia and google. Delving in further, even for just another 15 minutes a day, really helped me &amp;#x27;suck out marrow&amp;#x27; from the works. Especially since the guide was compiled at the end of the gilded age and before the wars and post-modern life, comparing it&amp;#x27;s view to today&amp;#x27;s is unavoidable and fascinating.&lt;p&gt;Part of &amp;#x27;ethics&amp;#x27; is mulling things over a lot, and &lt;i&gt;The Harvard Classics&lt;/i&gt; is one of the best jumping off points for that out there.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s free, excellently curated, time tested, and quick.</text></comment>
<story><title>Mozilla Wants Young People to Consider ‘Ethical Issues’ Before Taking Tech Jobs</title><url>https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxenxx/mozilla-wants-young-people-to-consider-ethical-issues-before-taking-jobs-in-tech</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>_bxg1</author><text>I took one of those courses; it wasn&amp;#x27;t intellectually stimulating and it felt like a condescending, corporate-mandated seminar. Even the professor was just going through the motions. But it doesn&amp;#x27;t have to be that way, that&amp;#x27;s just how it tends to play out.&lt;p&gt;What we need are not &amp;quot;ethics in tech&amp;quot; courses, but for people &lt;i&gt;in&lt;/i&gt; tech to get more exposure to general &lt;i&gt;humanities&lt;/i&gt; education. Require everyone getting a degree at your university - computer science majors included - to read and discuss classic literature, history, and philosophy. Exercise the parts of their brain that deal with questions whose answers can&amp;#x27;t be reduced to code. Ethics cannot be covered by a pamphlet of tech-specific rules; to act ethically, a person needs perspective on human nature and on what it means to be a member of society.</text></item><item><author>herbstein</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m just starting my 6th (and last) semester of my bachelor degree. During the semester we are exploring the ethics and morality of the modern computing evolution. The exploration includes the difference between publishers and editors, going back to basics of the &amp;quot;what and why&amp;quot; of privacy, and how companies exploit our (lack of) privacy to gain further growth.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately it&amp;#x27;s a course a lot of my classmates have expressed disdain for. To them it sounds more like a &amp;quot;gender-studies course&amp;quot; (their words) than a course for &amp;quot;super serious no-bullshit smart people&amp;quot; (my interpretation). I&amp;#x27;m hoping the readings will have them reconsider and realize how important considering the ethical implications of their programs.&lt;p&gt;As an example: a friend and a classmate works for $bigcorp. He had an idea for an employee engagement system. The idea was that every employee had a digital avatar that follows them around on the premises. So (as an example) when they go to the coffee machine their avatar high-fives the avatar of another person who&amp;#x27;s also getting coffee. This, as you can imagine, requires tracking the movement of employees to a fairly high degree. The project got two months into development before the &amp;quot;right&amp;quot; person heard about it, raised a fuzz, and got the project cancelled.&lt;p&gt;Neither my friend nor my other classmates see the problem with the precise tracking of the every move of every employee - that scares me a lot.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nitwit005</author><text>I went to a university that required quite a bit of liberal arts education with the CS degree. I can&amp;#x27;t think of anything with a substantial relation to engineering ethics covered in those courses.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t mean that to be demeaning, but just the reality of what gets covered. I did take Intro to Philosophy (Can&amp;#x27;t say I learned anything new in it), but most courses were things like French Caribbean Literature, Art History, Civics, etc.</text></comment>