“…there are countless small, unpretentious things we know with complete certainty.
Happiness is preferable to misery, and dignity is better than humiliation. It is bad that people suffer, and worse if a culture turns a blind eye to their suffering. Death is worse than life…
the attempt to find a common point of view is better than manipulative contempt for it.”
- Simon Blackburn, Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics
Short link: http://jkat.me/kNMJYB
From the NY Daily News via the Gothamist. Claims there’s a car dead zone around the Empire State Building.
…people suspect that it’s the presence of the multitude of radio and tv transmitters on the building’s 203-foot spire …jamming key-less locking systems and automotive disabling security systems.
Interactions among hard and soft technologies having an unintended effect on people — or bullshit.
Urban Legend In The Making: The ESB Dead Zone
Short link: http://jkat.me/eF7BI7
“Doc” List and I proposed an ethics open space for Agile 2008.
We all experience pressure to compromise our work and our reasonable care for others. As software becomes more beneficial, more pervasive, and inter-connected, our potential to harm grows.
Agile practices are making a contribution to ethical practice in our field, but we can and should be doing more to help each other navigate the ethical dilemmas we face.
This session will attempt to frame professional ethics in the context of agile values, make the community aware of the regulatory environment we may face from both state governments and standards bodies, and engage the participants in a conversation about how our day-to-day actions affect our employers, customers, peers, end users, and society.
Here’s the proposal http://submissions.agile2008.org/node/1573. Please rate and comment!
Short link: http://jkat.me/eLLRJa
Related posts:
Steven Doc List and I held a 20 minute presentation and 60 minute open space on software ethics.
I think the format works. Software ethics is not rules or reason, it is navigating essential complexity in building software and in moral choice. Descriptions that “abstract away its complexity often abstract away its essence” (Fred Brooks)
We embrace essential complexity using the values and practices of agile software development.
We can become better software developers using the same tools we use to build better software.
We can learn through practice to recognize and accept responsibility for the intended benefit and unintended harm we create.
We can retrospect on our actions and their consequences, engage in a conversation with our peers, learn from, challenge, and support each other.
Short link: http://jkat.me/lt7nMP
Over a year ago, my daughter were walking down a Chelsea sidewalk.
A homeless man walking in front of us froze so suddenly we stopped in our tracks.
He glared at an advertisement showing a human cadaver casually posed it’s skin removed to expose, muscles, tendons, veins, arteries and nerves. Vital organs extending out from its half rib cage.
“not right…”
The man turned to the people flowing past him. “They shouldn’t do that!”
Bodies’ Exhibitors Admit Corpse Origins Are Murky:
“After more than two years of assurances that the cadavers on display in a popular South Street Seaport exhibit were legally obtained in China, the company that runs the exhibit admitted on Thursday that it could not prove that the bodies were not those of prisoners who might have been tortured or executed.” — May 2008 NY Times
In a settlement with the State of New York, the exhibitor has promised refunds to anyone who has seen the exhibit and have changed their policies around acquiring new bodies.
The article quotes a man visiting the exhibit, “When you’re dead, you’re dead. What difference does it make?”
Short link: http://jkat.me/iTW5WZ
I am an executive manager, software developer, father and husband trying to do more good than harm.
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Copyright © 2006-2012
Ken H. Judy.
