Ethical Dilemmas and Agile Software Development

“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!

Unintended Consequences

Green on the Empire State Building by paulaloe, on flickrFrom 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

Being Good

“…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

We Don’t Want to Hate

Tomania

The IEET posted Charlie Chaplin’s speech from The Great Dictator.

“Hope…

I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an Emperor – that’s not my business – I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that.

We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone

Search your heart. How did these words make you feel? Is there hope?

If these words strike you as ridiculous, what kind of world does that leave us?