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NEW HAVEN, Conn, Nov. 20 -- Imagine doing something legal in the privacy of your own home that causes you to be convicted of breaking laws in a state thousands of miles away? With the new, borderless world of computers, almost anything is possible. Take, for example, the case of Robert and Carleen Thomas.
In 1991, the couple began operating the Amateur Action Computer Bulletin Board System from their home in California. While the site contained sexually explicit materials for viewing and for sale, it required a membership fee and password to access. After a complaint by a Tennessee web surfer, a Tennessee court found the Thomases guilty of various obscenity and interstate commerce laws and sentenced the couple to nearly three years in prison.
The Thomas case and others like it have become the subjects of research and dialogue among computer ethicists around the world and at the Research Center on Computing and Society at Southern Connecticut State University, where philosophy professor Terrell Ward Bynum serves as director.
"Exactly where does a sale take place?" Bynum asks. "At the server, where the customer is, where the product is? This is one small example of the types of questions computer ethics explores."
Computer ethics is broadly defined as the analysis of the nature and the social impact of computer technology and the corresponding formulation and justification of policies for the ethical use of such technology. It is an evolving field that touches upon many familiar issues, from privacy, to plagiarism, to the downloading of music and films off the Internet.
"In computer ethics, we look at the bad side of computers as well as the good side – such as developments in medicine," Bynum explains. "It is an exciting, and ever-evolving, field that breathes new life into old theories. Things change so fast, that by the time a policy is written or a law made, the world of computers is often in a new direction, and the policy or law is already out of date."
Computer ethics as a field of study was founded by MIT professor Norbert Wiener during World War II while helping to develop an anti-aircraft cannon. One part of the cannon had to "perceive" and track an airplane, then calculate its likely trajectory and "talk" to another part of the cannon to fire the shells. The engineering challenge of this project caused Wiener and some colleagues to create a new branch of science, which Wiener called "cybernetics" – the science of information feedback systems.
"Wiener realized that machines that perceive the world, think about information and act on that information were going to have a huge social impact," explains Bynum.
In 1950, Weiner published The Human Use of Human Beings, which explored the social and ethical problems posed by computers. At the time, no one paid much attention to what Weiner had to say. But that changed in the 1960s, with the beginning of computer-aided crimes and the advent of privacy and security issues. By the 1970s, privacy and computer crime laws were enacted in the United States and Europe, and computer professionals were adopting codes of ethics.
Then in 1976, while teaching a medical ethics course, Walter Maner, a professor from Boston University, became interested in the role of computers in medical ethics cases. Further examination convinced Maner of the need for a separate branch of applied ethics, which he dubbed "computer ethics." He developed a university course, traveled around America giving speeches and conducting workshops at conferences, and published A Starter Kit for Teaching Computer Ethics.
In 1978, Bynum attended one of Maner's workshops, and his life was changed.
"At two o'clock I walked into the room not knowing what computer ethics was," Bynum recalls. "At four o'clock, I walked out knowing that I was going to devote the rest of my career to help develop the field and teach the world. It was a life-transforming event that has shaped the past 25 years of my career."
Bynum developed his own curriculum, and began lecturing around the county. In 1983, as editor of the journal Metaphilosophy, Bynum ran an essay contest soliciting articles on the topic of computer ethics and then published the winning essays in a special 1984 edition of the journal entitled, "What is Computer Ethics?"
In the fall of 1987, Bynum joined Southern, where he founded the first computer research center in the world. In 1991, with the help of four National Science Grants, Bynum launched the first international conference on computer ethics: The National Conference on Computing and Values. The event was a major success, with more than 400 attendees from 32 states and seven countries traveling to Southern. Information from the conference was purchased by more than 350 universities around the world, and helped achieve Bynum's first goal of "spreading the seeds of computer ethics around the globe by bringing together a critical mass of scholars to develop materials and create the foundation for future courses."
"Southern was my Johnny Appleseed where I planted seed to start other centers, and I knew that the second phase of my mission was to expand to Europe," Bynum explains. He sent letters to 40 universities in Great Britain to help establish the second computer research center and was amazed that 26 responded with interest. "De Montfort University included a stipend in their offer, so that is where I chose to help establish the Center for Corporate and Social Responsibility, the first computer research center in Europe."
Bynum spent the first half of 1995 at De Montfort, where, with the Center for Corporate and Social Responsibility's director Simon Rogerson, Bynum launched the new center with a conference known as Ethicomp '95. It was the first computer ethics conference in Europe, with 100 scholars attending.
Since that time, every 18 months Bynum has helped organize ETHICOMP conferences around the globe, including Spain, Holland, Italy, Poland and Portugal, with future conferences planned for 2004 in Greece and 2005 in Sweden. The conferences have grown to feature more than 200 attendees from 30 countries. Bynum has also helped establish the Business and Computer Ethics research center in Poland, the Software Engineering Ethics Research Institute at East Tennessee State University and the Australian Institute of Computer Ethics.
"Now, I can't go to all the conferences, read all the materials or know all the people," Bynum remarks. "A whole new series of conferences has emerged which is more philosophical in nature, and the field is already beginning to break up into segments."
Today, Bynum continues to work within Southern, helping the information technology staff identify social and ethical issues on campus. He's also striving to expand his work to include the other three CSU universities. And he continues to carry pursue his goal of teaching computer ethics and expanding its reach beyond the classroom.
His efforts are working. The RCCS' website at Southern (http://www.southernct.edu/organizations/rccs/index.html) continues to grow and receives 1.5 million hits per year from 70 countries. The website also is being linked to Bynum and Rogerson's new textbook, Computer Ethics and Professional Responsibility (Blackwell Publishing, 400 pgs) to provide updated case studies. In addition, Bynum is eying Asia as the next location for a future computer ethics center and is working to with the Lun Li from the Institute of Hunan Normal University in China toward that goal.
"In the future, we will be living in an omni connected society, where we will be connected to our computer, to our home, to our family – even to our pets," Bynum predicts. "Reality will not be far from the (the movie) Matrix, and the issues challenging the field of computer ethics will continue to evolve. "
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