Final Assignment: Ethics and CS in Wider Society

Due Sunday, March 20 at 11:59:59 PM

Grading

While this assignment is included along with the labs, this is only because it is expected to be completed during the week 10 - week 11 time, as with a typical lab. Instead of being graded as a lab assignment, this counts towards overall 5% of your grade on the final exam. This grade is split up into two non-equal parts:

• Task 1: 3% of the Final Exam
• Task 2: 2% of the Final Exam

Note that unlike with the labs, this is an individual assignment. That is, you may not work with a partner for this assignment.

Assignment Background

The purpose of this assignment is to expose you to CS in wider society, relating both to ethical questions and recent impacts. While this information is not directly related the stated content of CS64 per se, it is still quite relevant and nonetheless important. You have reached a point in your student careers where you have been exposed to a wealth of information central to CS, but not much information concerning the broader impact and scope of this CS information. This assignment is intended to expose you to some of this larger context.

Assignment Goals

By the time you have completed this work, you should be able to:

• Understand clauses from the ACM/IEEE-CS code of ethics, and which clauses apply in various scenarios
• Identify recent impacts of computer science in the surrounding world

Step by Step Instructions

This assignment is split into two distinct tasks:

• Task 1: Identify Relevant Code of Ethics Clauses
• Task 2: Identify the Global Impacts of Computer Science in Assorted Domains

Task 1: Identify Relevant Code of Ethics Clauses

Read the joint ACM/IEEE-CS code of ethics here. After you have familiarized yourself with the code of ethics, read these case studies on ethics. From there, go to this form, where you will identify which clauses from the code of ethics are more relevant to each case study.

To submit this task, be sure to enter your correct name and CS username (these are the last two questions in the form), and click “Submit”. After you've submitted the form, you can still edit the form up until the deadline.

Below are some links for those interested in further reading. To be clear, visiting these links is optional for this assignment.

• Software Engineering Ethics, a somewhat larger discussion of ethics
• Ethics in Information Technology, a link to a book with an in-depth discussion of ethics as it relates to computing

Task 2: Identify the Global Impacts of Computer Science in Assorted Domains

Watch this video from Megan Smith of Google a the 2010 Computer Science & Information Technology Conference. Afterwards, go to this form, where you will identify the impact of CS in a variety of areas.

To submit this task, be sure to enter your correct name and CS username (these are the last two questions in the form), and click “Submit”. After you've submitted the form, you can still edit the form up until the deadline.