Has anyone tracked down the blinding flash that programming has ethical consequences?
Programmers are charged to point out ethical dimensions and issues not noticed by muggles.
This may come as a surprise but programmers in the broader sense have been aware of ethical dimensions to programming for decades.
Perhaps the best known example of a road to Damascus type event is the Trinity atomic bomb test in New Mexico. Oppenheimer recalling a line from the Bhagavad Gita:
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
To say nothing of the programmers who labored for years to guarantee world wide delivery of nuclear warheads in 30 minutes or less.
But it isn’t necessary to invoke a nuclear Armageddon to find ethical issues that have faced programmers prior to the current ethics frenzy.
Any guesses as to how red line maps were created?
Do you think “red line” maps just sprang up on their own? Or was someone collecting, collating and analyzing the data, much as we would do now but more slowly?
Every act of collecting, collating and analyzing data, now with computers, can and probably does have ethical dimensions and issues.
Programmers can and should raise ethical issues, especially when they may be obscured or clouded by programming techniques or practices.
However, programmers announcing ethical issues to their less fortunate colleagues isn’t likely to lead to a fruitful discussion.