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Online Ethics Center: Teaching Engineering Responsibility for Societal Consequences

What to Stress
Suggested Pre-Assignments
Expanding Design Course Material
Web Resources and Bibliography

Decisions about the directions technology take and how products are designed can have incredible societal impacts. Job displacement and loss of privacy are two examples of societal consequences of technology. This section focuses on teaching engineering students about the profound societal affects of the technological products they create and getting them to consider what processes could be built into their designs that will prevent problems or at least provide solutions to them should they arise. (Some of the underlying issues here will also be relevant to certain topics within the Professional Responsibilities of the Individual Engineer section.)

What to Stress:

Teaching students about the societal impact of engineering decisions is a three step process:

Students need to see how and in what ways their engineering decisions might impact society and to realize that often, the way products are designed and the direction that technological advances take, has a direct affect on the character and strength of these impacts. Since engineers play a central role in the design and direction of technology, they have an obligation to think about possible societal impacts and to incorporate those concerns as relevant factors when making engineering decisions. There are many possible societal consequences, such as loss of privacy, job displacement/job creation, and possible sinister uses of new technology (the so-called end problem). New technology might also impact a society's belief system about things like the nature of human beings or the meaning of motherhood. It can have far-reaching effects on our legal system. How far does an engineer's responsibility to consider such consequences extend? Does the fact that some of these consequences can be mediated (sometimes with the development of even more technology) make a difference? Since there are usually several people of various professions involved in the development of new technology or products, to what extent are engineers responsible for these possible impacts? It is often hard to anticipate what societal impacts a given technology might have. If there is an unforeseen negative impact, under what conditions can we assign blame? (See Negligence, Recklessness, Intended/Unintended Harm for a general discussion of some of these issues.)
This last question leads us to the second step. The fact that a given impact was unforeseen does not necessarily absolve engineers of responsibility for that impact, should it occur. We might argue that, in at least some cases, the unforeseen consequence should have been anticipated. Students need to be taught how to anticipate possible impacts. As Caroline Whitbeck points out, "experience with the consequences of [past] engineering design decisions has broadened the range of consequences that engineers are expected to foresee and the range of factors that they are expected to consider in controlling these consequences" (citation below). In other words, we learn in part from thinking about and attempting to understand our past. Exercising moral imagination also helps in this regard. (See pre-assignments below.) Stress that as advances in the field alter the engineering process, while the issues may change the methods for analyzing and resolving those issues will remain useful.
Once students can anticipate the possible societal impacts of technology, they need to be taught how to incorporate these possibilities into their engineering decisions. Students should think about which of these consequences they are responsible for trying to mediate. Then they need to be taught how to incorporate these as relevant factors in designing their products and in making decisions that influence the direction that new technology takes.

Suggested Pre-Assignments

From the past to the future: the First and Second Steps

The goal of these pre-assignments is to satisfy the first two steps: to show students that ethical dilemmas are embedded in the very practice or process of engineering (in this case, ethical issues regarding the societal implications of technology) and to show students how to anticipate the possible societal implications of their designs.

Examining the Past:

Examining the societal impact of past technological advances helps give students the tools necessary to anticipate such impacts of future technologies. You might pick some important technological advances and ask students to think about the societal implications of them. If students could go back in time, knowing what they know now, how might they have designed these products differently?

Thinking about the Future:

Thinking of the societal impact of new technology requires incredible moral imagination. Students should be encouraged to think about the possible societal consequences of future technology; especially technology they will likely play a part in creating. Rosalyn Berne (University of Virginia) suggests two ways of getting students to consider developing future technologies, such as nanotechnology, cloning, cyber intelligence and genetic engineering technologies, that "hold the potential to radically alter the fundamental nature of human biological life." She offers two interesting projects that encourage students to engage in the type of moral imagination necessary for thinking about potential future societal impacts of technology.

Intergenerational Instruction in Engineering Ethics about the Future Berne points out that senior citizens have a lifetime of experience adopting new technologies into their lives. This project emphasizes the insight students can gain from hearing the thoughts of seniors on the ethical implications of the development of new technologies. Berne discusses her project and includes samples of students' responses to the project.
Using the Film, The Matrix in an Engineering Ethics Course In this project, Berne shows how using film and novels helps students "to uncover otherwise elusive ideas and feelings, while providing a vehicle for constructive thinking, writing, and discussion about them." Berne discusses how she uses film to generate class discussion about societal impacts of engineering and includes samples of students' responses to the project.

Expanding Design Course Material to Include Consideration of Societal Consequences

Applying Knowledge to Designs: The Third Step

Once students are taught to anticipate the societal implications of engineering, they are ready to tackle the third step: learning how to incorporate these possibilities into their own engineering decisions. Students in design courses can think about these implications for their own designs. ComputingCases.org has a brilliant project called the Social Impact Analysis (SIA). Similar to the Environmental Impact Statement, the SIA is "a way to involve students directly in investigating the social and ethical issues associated with a real or proposed computing system." Ben Shneiderman first suggested this project as a way of enabling "software designers to find out the social impact of the systems they design in time to incorporate changes in those systems as they are built."

While this project was developed for computer science majors, it can easily be altered to work for any engineering discipline. Students are asked to identify potential societal implications of their projects and to think about how changes in the design of those products might mediate such implications. Suggestions are given on the website for preparing and writing an SIA as an ongoing aspect of the design course.

Web Resources and Bibliography

Numerical and Design Problems with Ethical Content: These are cases on various topics in engineering and engineering ethics, integrating numerical and design problems with ethical issues. These problems were originally developed as part of an NSF-funded project to create numerical problems that raise ethical issues for use in engineering and other course assignments. Relevant cases to societal impacts include: Risk, Tradeoffs, and Informed Consent: The "Hundred Year Flood " which asks students to consider whether worker housing should be built on a flood plane and, if so, what types of housing would be most appropriate, according to numerical calculations of the frequency of severe flooding and of damages. Suitable for courses in construction, project management, engineering economics, and general engineering introductory, levels 1-4; Software Testing where students are asked how to test new software for airplane altitude controls combined with navigation. Suitable for courses in statistics, software engineering, reliability engineering, levels 3-4.
Legality versus Ethicality in Software Testing: A Module for Classroom Exercises: In this article, Joseph H. Wujek, P.E. (University of California at Berkeley) discusses using cases to help students see the societal implications of software testing. Variations on using cases are also discussed, as well as adapting this approach for other engineering specialties.
Privacy: Online Ethics Center: With the growth of computer technology in the past twenty years, a serious new issue faces the engineer and scientist in a computer-related field. That issue is Privacy over networks and the Internet. With issues ranging from encryption of credit card numbers, to intellectual property rights, to issues of national security, Internet Privacy is one of the hottest issues.
Active Learning in an Asynchronous Learning Environment: A Classroom Demonstration: In this essay, Keith Miller (dept. of computer science, University of Illinois at Springfield) offers a great and non-time-consuming project that enables students to understand one important societal implication of computer development; issues of censorship. Students imagine they are working for a university's IT department and are asked to block student access to certain websites; namely, those advocating terrorist activity. Miller's project is instrumental in getting students to discuss and think about this issue.
Cases about Computers and Software: Cases for use in class discussion about the societal implications of computers and software; privacy on the internet and the therac-25 accidents are included.
NSPE Cases about Public Safety and Public Welfare: These cases present situations that raise ethical questions common in engineering practice and research. They are based on original cases brought to the BER (Board of Ethical Review) of the NSPE (National Society of Professional Engineers) for review. The NSPE BER reviews cases with the specific purpose of making an ethical judgment on the actions of (only) the engineers in the cases, based solely on the NSPE Code of Ethics. The Online Ethics Center is presenting new versions of these cases that are more suitable for group and class discussion. Each rewritten case has a link to the original NSPE version.
ComputingCases.org: This web site, funded by NSF, is designed to help teach ethical issues in computing. It has cases to generate classroom discussion, along with suggestions on how to use cases as a teaching tool. It also has an interesting project designed to get students to think about the ethical and social impact of computers. Based on the environmental impact statement, this project asks students to create a social impact statement. It also has links to other helpful sites.
Societal Implications of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology: Final Report from a Workshop held at the National Science Foundation, Sept. 28-29, 2000. Examines the political, economic, social, legal, ethical implications of nanoscience and nanotechnology.
Whitbeck, Caroline. 1998. Ethics in Engineering Practice and Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.: This book, a cornerstone for teaching engineering ethics, contains much valuable information and cases.