Question

Access Don Gotterbarn’s arguments for the claim that computer ethics is, at bottom, a field whose primary concern should focus on moral responsibility issues for computer professionals. Do you agree with his position? Please elaborate (beyond a yes or no answer) and provide your “theoretical” rationale in support of your responses (knowledge)

Answer 1

Answer:-------------
Gotterbarn’s arguments are well constructed, and Gotterbarn makes a plausible case for why computer ethics should be conceived of as field of professional ethics. In defense of Gotterbarn’s position, we must concede that an understanding of professional-responsibility issues is critical to an adequate understanding and analysis of computer ethics issues. In the period of computing preceding the World Wide Web, Gotterbarn’s argument for why the field of computer ethics should be conceived of as an area of professional ethics (whose primary concern was for computer professionals) was plausible. At that time, many (if not most) of the ethical issues involving computers directly affected the computing profession. Since then, however, two important factors have influenced the field. First, a new (and broader) wave of computer-related ethical issues emerged when the Internet became accessible to ordinary people. Second, most people who currently use computers, either for work or for recreational purposes, are not computer professionals. So, it would seem that we need a much broader conception of the field than the one proposed by Gotterbarn. However, we also saw that Gotterbarn’s view may ultimately turn out to be correct as more and more traditional computer-ethics issues, such as those involving privacy, property, speech, and so forth, become folded into “ordinary ethics.”