The Brief History of Computer Ethics

    •1978: The adoption of Right to Federal Privacy Act, which limited government’s ability to search bank records. 

    •1979: Terrell Ward Bynum, developed curriculum for university course on computer ethics. He late launched an essay competition to generate interest in computer ethics. In 1985, he published the widest-selling issue in journal’s history -- “ Entitled Computers and Ethics” 
    •1984: The adoption of Small Business Computer Security and Education Act, which advises congress on matters relating to computer crime against small businesses. 
    •1985: James Moor classic essay, “What is Computer Ethics?” were published, in his view, computer ethics includes: 


    (1) identification of computer-generated policy vacuums, (2) clarification of conceptual muddles, (3) formulation of policies for the use of computer technology, and (4) ethical justification of such policies. ---Terrell Ward Bynum


    •1985: Deborah Johnson published the first major textbook in computer Ethics, and became the standard-setting textbook in computer ethics. It also set up the research agenda for almost a decade. 
    •1986: The rewritten of Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which covers the digital, data, and video communication. 
    •1988: Robert Hauptman a librarian at St. Cloud University coined the term “information ethics” it comprises all the ethical issues related to the production, storage, access and dissemination of information. 
    •1988: The adoption of Computer Matching and Privacy Act, which restricts government’s right to programs or identifying debtors. 
  
  
1990s - Present The pinnacle of computer technology, the coming together of computers, telecommunications and media, which features the internet and World Wide Web. It become such a phenomenon, which brought a seemingly endless set of ethical issues such as legal jurisdiction, free speech, virtual community and the concerns of all the past. 
  
    •1992: ACM adopted the “ACM code of Ethics and Professional Conduct”. It consists of 24 imperatives formulated as statements of personal responsibility. 

    •1995: Gorniak Kocikowska, predicted computer ethics will eventually evolve into a system of global ethics that applicable in virtually every culture, then, it will be the ordinary ethics of information age. 
    •1999: Deborah Johnson, opposite of Gorniak’s view, assumes computer ethical theories will not lead to a revolution in ethics, but only servers as the bedrock foundation of ethical thinking and analysis. The computer ethics is only the same old ethics questions with a new twist.


In 1940s, Norbert Weiner, MIT professor and a pioneer of computing, create “cybernetics”, an information feedback system and forecast that computers would create unemployment worse than Great Depression, but it was ignored for decades. 


1950s-1960s The dawn of computer technology, which features large mainframe computer, the main issues are “can machines think?” personal privacy threats, centralization of power and big government.


    •1950: Norbert Wiener published the book, “the Human Use of Human Beings”, which established him as the founder of computer ethics and laid out the foundation of computer ethics. 
    •1966: MIT’s Joseph Weizenbaum writes a program called ELIZA that makes the computer act as a psychotherapist. 
    •1966: First computer crime, a programmer used computer code to prevent his banking account from being flagged as overdrawn. When late discovered, there was no law to charge this crime. 
    •1966: the adoption of Freedom of Information Act, which gave the individual and organizations the right to access data held by the federal government 
    •1960s: Donn Parker, an author on computer crimes, pointed by ACM, led the creation of ethics code in computer technology fields.


1970s-1980s The young and exponential growth of computer technology, which features minicomputer, microcomputer, personal computer and the beginning of networking. The attention turned to software and the issues are surrounding it, such as property rights, software piracy, liability, privacy, computer crime, hackers and more.


    •1970: Walter Maner, a medical teacher and researcher, noticed the need for a separate branch of applied computer ethics, developed course, workshops. The “computer ethics” coined ever since. 

    •1970: The adoption of Fair Credit Reporting Act, which dealt with handling of credit data. 
    •1973: ACM adopted the professional codes of ethics, by the middle of 70s, new privacy and computer crime laws had been enacted in American and European, 
    •1976: Joseph Weizenbaum published book, “Computer Power and Human Reason” which considered the classic in computer ethics. 
    •1976: Abbe Mowshowitz published article, titled: “On approaches to the study of social issues in computing”

computer ethics

Ethics is a set of moral principles that govern the behavior of a group or individual. Therefore, computer ethics is set of moral principles that regulate the use of computers. Some common issues of computer ethics include intellectual property rights, privacy concerns, and how computers affect society.

For example, while it is easy to duplicate copyrighted electronic content, computer ethics would suggest that it is wrong to do so without the author's approval. And while it may be possible to access someone's personal information on a computer system, computer ethics would advise that such an action is unethical.

As technology advances, computers continue to have a greater impact on society. Therefore, computer ethics promotes the discussion of how much influence computers should have in areas such as artificial intelligence and human communication. As the world of computers evolves, computer ethics continues to create ethical standards that address new issues raised by new technologies.