Herman T. Tavani
Rivier College
htavani@rivier.edu
http://www.rivier.edu/staff/htavani/

A growing number of Internet resources¹ are available to instructors interested in developing or revising a course in computer ethics. Several online teaching resources are either located on or accessible from World Wide Web sites designed and maintained by course instructors. While some of these Web sites contain materials useful for preparing a course syllabus, others include information that can aid instructors and students in certain computer ethics research projects. Many of these Web sites also include direct links to additional online resources, some of which can be used to supplement (hardcopy) computer ethics textbooks,² including the recent flurry of "second-generation" texts which examine many more Internet-specific ethical issues.³

Although the online computer ethics resources are scattered across a range of diverse Web sites, the URLs (Universal Resource Locators) or Web addresses of many of those sites have fortunately been compiled and included in two teaching-related Web sites:

• Courses in Social and Ethical Issues in Computing

• Organizations, Jounals, & On-line Information

Both sites were developed by Tom Jewett, Editor of Computers and Society and a professor in the Department of Engineering and Computer Science at California State University, Long Beach. Hereafter, the first of these two Web sites will be referred to as the "course development" site and the second as the "course research" site. Because each site identifies resources useful for different purposes-one for developing a course syllabus, and the other for locating information useful for course research projects-each will be reviewed separately. We begin with an examination of the Web site on course development.

1. The "Course Development" Site

The Web site for course development identifies fifty-one courses taught at forty-five colleges and universities. Nine of the institutions identified are international⁴-three are located in Canada; three in the UK; one in Ireland (at the Queen's University of Belfast); one in Norway (at the University of Oslo); and one in Turkey (at Bilkent University). Many of the courses identified in the course development Web site are interdisciplinary, and some are team taught by instructors from more than one department. Most of the courses listed are taught by faculty in Philosophy, Computer Science, Information Science, and Behavioral Science Departments. While proportionately few of the courses identified are taught (solely at least) by philosophy instructors, many of the course syllabi and teaching resources available at this site will nonetheless be of interest to philosophy instructors who currently teach, or who may be in the process of developing, courses in computer ethics, technological ethics, or philosophy and technology.

In addition to providing information on the course title, course number, and course instructor for each course listed, the course development Web site also includes further details about the contents of each instructor's own course site. For example, information on whether an instructor's site contains course project information, course assignments, lecture notes, course schedules, (electronic) discussions, and course modules is also indicated. Each course identified in the course development site also includes the URL for that course instructor's own Web site. And many of the instructors' Web sites, in turn, contain extensive links to additional online computer ethics resources.

One instructor's Web site that will be of particular interest to philosophers is Charles Kay's "Online Coursebook: Computers, Ethics, and Society." In addition to the syllabus for his Computers, Ethics, and Society course, Professor Kay's site includes a series of Internet links to computer-ethics-related organizations and academic sites, as well as links to online discussions of particular computer ethics issues such as privacy, property, security and encryption, censorship and freedom of expression, and so forth. Also included on the home page of Kay's site is a link to his "Ethical Theories" page, which in turn includes some useful links to online sources on various ethical theories (e.g., egoism, utilitarianism, deontological ethics, etc.). His "Ethical Theories" page also includes a link titled "Bibliographic Essays," which references Lawrence Hinman's "Ethics Updates" site. The latter site includes a host of links to online resources such as ethics discussion forums, bibliographic sources, and course syllabi for applied ethics courses, as well as a calendar of upcoming ethics conferences and events. Both Professor Kay's and Professor Hinman's sites are themselves rich online ethics resources that deserve separate reviews. To say more about those sites here, however, would go beyond the intended scope of the present review.

Other instructors' course sites (listed in Jewett's course development Web site) which should be of interest to philosophers who wish to examine course syllabi are Edward Zalta's "Computers and Ethics" and David Long's "Business and Computer Ethics"  Web sites. Certain course syllabi developed by computer science instructors, such as Stanford University's Terry Winograd and MIT's Mitch Kapor, will also be of interest to philosophers who team teach or work closely with instructors in Computer Science Departments.

When I recently revised my computer ethics course syllabus, I found many of the syllabi available through Jewett's course development Web site to be useful resources. For example, I was able to discover, with relative ease, which course texts, course assignments, and teaching strategies are currently being used by philosophy instructors as well as instructors from other disciplines. I suspect that many philosophy instructors who are developing or revising a course in computer ethics, or who plan to add a course component on computer ethics to an applied ethics course they currently teach, will also find several of the syllabi included in the course development Web site to be useful teaching resources.

Though the course development Web site is, in its current form, already an excellent online resource, Professor Jewett plans to expand on this site-which he currently describes as "static"-by making it "more interactive." He also intends to add to the list of courses currently identified, and he welcomes the addition of online syllabi and online course-related materials from instructors interested in sharing course information as well as teaching tips. Instructors who wish to contribute online course materials can send e-mail to: jewett@engr.csulb.edu.

2. The "Course Research" Site

Both students and instructors should find Professor Jewett's other Web site, which we earlier labeled the "course research" site, a useful resource for beginning their online research on topics and issues in computer ethics. The site identifies nine organizations, ten university centers, seven print periodicals with Web sites, five electronic periodicals, five "resource listings," and nine news groups.

Included among the nine organizations identified in this site are the Association for Computer Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computers and Society (ACM/SIGCAS), Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), and the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineering's Society for the Social Implications of Technology (IEEE-SSIT). Also included are links to each organization's home page, from which instructors and students can directly access a host of relevant resources. For example, information about professional codes of conduct for engineers and computer professionals-viz, the ACM and IEEE Codes of Ethics-is available through these sites.

Also included on the "course research" site are links to Web sites for print journals on ethical and social issues in computing.⁵ Instructors and students interested in viewing the recent tables of contents of certain print journals, as well as bibliographies of articles and reviews that have appeared in those journals in recent years, can do so by clicking on relevant links. Abstracts of recently published articles in some print journals, such as The Information Society, can also be viewed online. Students and instructors interested in reading electronic-only publications (or E-journals) on ethical and social issues in computing can link to any of the five currently available periodicals identified in the "Electronic Periodicals" section of Jewett's Web site. The section of the course research Web site titled "University Centers and Resources" includes a link to MIT's Ethics Center for Engineering and Science and one to Southern Connecticut State University's Research Center on Computing and Society, directed by Professor Terry Bynum. Both sites contain useful resources for applied ethics research. The "Resource Listings" section of Jewett's Web site contains a series of links to several sites, which are themselves collections of links to other sites-e.g., sites on topics which include cyberculture, net ethics, privacy, etc. The "News Groups" section, on the other hand, identifies a list of discussion groups that focus on issues related to women (comp.society.women), privacy (comp.society.privacy), risks (comp.risks), and so forth.

I recently included the URL for the course research Web site in the "Online Resources" section of my computer ethics syllabus, because I believe that many students will find certain Internet links included in that site to be a useful departure point for online research. For example, students interested in locating sources for a research project on computers and privacy can begin by accessing the "Internet Privacy Coalition" and "Electronic Privacy Information Center" Web sites, via direct links included in the course research site. Because Jewett's course research Web site is comprised primarily of resources that are interdisciplinary in nature, the site may not be particularly useful to those philosophers interested only in philosophical resources on computer ethics. However, many philosophy instructors who teach a computer ethics course-and especially those instructors preparing to teach such a course for the first time-should find several of the resources listed in Jewett's course research Web site helpful for course projects and instruction.

Concluding Comments

Fortunately, several online resources are now available to course instructors and students interested in computer ethics. These resources can, of course, be tracked down using various Internet search engines. Thanks to Tom Jewett, however, many of these resources are directly accessible through two well-designed Web sites dedicated to computer ethics instruction. Both sites are still evolving, and I suspect that each site will continue to grow in terms of the number of resources listed and will improve in terms of its usability. I also suspect that many instructors will appreciate the work Professor Jewett has done to date in providing us with a pair of Web sites for conveniently accessing so many useful online teaching resources.

Notes

1. While Internet resources are available through various protocols-e.g., protocols such as Gopher, FTP (File Transfer Protocol), Usenet, and so forth-resources identified in this study are limited to those residing on World Wide Web sites, accessible through the HyperText Transfer Protocol (http). Access to such sites will, of course, be available to anyone who has standard Internet access and a Web browser such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Explorer.

2. Some excellent (hardcopy) computer ethics textbooks are currently available for course use. For a comparative review of five recent textbooks, see H. Tavani, "Selecting a Computer Ethics Coursebook," Computers and Society (Vol. 26, No. 4., December 1996), 15-21. A more extensive list of available computer ethics textbooks is included in "Teaching a Course in Computers, Ethics, and Society," Chap. 2 of H. Tavani (ed.), Computing, Ethics, and Social Responsibility: A Bibliography (Palo Alto, CA: CPSR (Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility) Press, 1996). An online version of the bibliography is available at http://www.siu.edu/departments/coba/mgmt/iswnet/isethics/biblio.

3. While many first-generation computer ethics textbooks tend to focus on ethical issues associated with stand-alone (or non-networked) computing, most recent textbooks devote considerable space to discussions of ethical issues involving the use of computer networks, including the Internet. For an annotated list of recent textbooks (published since 1997), see H. Tavani, "Bibliography Supplement '97," Computers and Society (Vol. 27, No. 2, June 1997) and "Recent Coursebooks and Articles of Interest," Computers and Society (Vol. 28, No. 1, March 1998, 41-42). An online (annotated) list of recent computer ethics textbooks is also included in my Computer Ethics Bibliography: Update 1997-1998, available at: http://www.rivier.edu/staff/htavani/biblio.htm.

4. Some critics have noted that while the Internet is supposedly an international medium, the language of the Internet favors English speaking nations. Of the fifty-one courses identified in the course development Web site, only one instructor's course site-the Computers and Society course taught at the University of Oslo- Norway -is a non-English language Web site. Unfortunately, many important and very interesting non-English language Web sites related to computer ethics have not received the attention they deserve. Ro^'na^'n Kennedy, in his "Open Location" column in the December 1997 issue of Computers and Society (Vol. 27, No. 4, 25-26), identifies a number of such sites. For an excellent starting point, see: http://www.indigo.ie/egt/.

5. Several print journals regularly include articles on or related to issues in computer ethics. For a comparative review of six print journals whose primary focus is on ethical and social issues in computing, see H. Tavani, "Journals and Periodicals on Computers, Ethics, and Society," Computers and Society (Vol. 27, No. 2, June 1997), 20-26. An annotated list of fifty print journals and periodicals that frequently include articles on (and, in some cases, occasionally devote entire issues to topics in) computer ethics is included in Part II of that article, published in the September 1997 issue of Computers and Society (Vol. 27, No. 3), 39-43.

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