The Internet Virus--A Commentary

[Clayton Cramer]

In article <5365 at medusa.cs.purdue.edu., spaf at cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) writes:
. In article <236 at bigbroth.UUCP. rk at bigbroth.UUCP (rohan kelley) writes:
. .What rick rogers has done is make a strong case for requiring a course
. .in ethics for every CS major.  It may not work, but a little more
. .ethics in all our professions wouldn't hurt.  We put some pretty
. .powerful stuff in the hands of some pretty young (and sometimes
. .immature) individuals in the CS courses across the country.  
. 
. Funny you should mention that.  I'm on a taskforce of ACM & IEEE-CS
. members working to define "Curriculum 90" for CS & CS undergraduate
. programs.  The members of the netire committee have been in agreement
. for the last year that there will be a substantial, required amount of
. work in ethics and professionalism as part of the recommended undergrad
. major.  We have been worried that many schools would fight such
. a recommendation.  Thanks to the worm incident, I doubt we'll
. have quite so much resistance.
. 
. Gene Spafford

So tell me: how will a *class* in ethics make someone more responsible
and concerned about right and wrong?  I don't think I've ever seen a
person become responsible or moral as a result of a class -- this seems
to be a set of values kids acquire (or don't acquire) pretty young.

-- 
Clayton E. Cramer
..!ames!pyramid!kontron!optilin!cramer