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A Rationale for the Proposed Revision of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Code of Professional Conduct
Ronald E. Anderson
- Why an Ethics Code?
- Background of the ACM Code of Professional Conduct
- An Approach to Revision of the Code
- Structure of the Code
- Remaining Issues
- Conclusion
- References
Creating, applying, and updating an effective code of ethics is essential for any association of computing professionals. But the ethical challenges of the future may be so great that present concerns and procedures may have to be altered radically in order to reduce the distance between technological “can dos” and ethical “shoulds.” Already there are hints of radically new issues. For instance, an organization in Eastern Europe has claimed to release a new computer virus every seven minutes, but as yet there is no international criminal justice system to cope with such global threats (6). Another new vulnerability derives from the digitization of all kinds of information. More and more sound and video material is getting digitized, yet there are no techniques for tracing fraudulent alterations of these creations. Digitizing combined with virtual reality techniques, which produce experiences where fantasy and reality are indistinguishable, could create entirely fabricated “events.” Enforcement institutions can not keep pace with such rapid technological change. All we have to fall back on are people and their ethical standards.
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