Gift of Ash
Just finished reading both the 2nd, and 3rd editions of Gift of Fire, by Sara Baase. I have to say I'm not impressed.
It's not like it wasn't clearly a great effort -- Baase went through a lot of material to produce this. She's been around for at least a good part of the history of the field and does bring up many of the important issues and questions concerning society, ethics, professionalism, and in general the types of things a 'Computers and Society' type course would cover, satisfying CIPS' requirement for an ethics class as well. As a textbook it was OK. Lots of questions, lots of examples.
First off, Baase seems, with this book, to be putting on a trolling hat. She is trying to provoke the student reader, to challenge their preconceived notations, and in general, to tick everyone off equally. She succeeds. Got me with the tripe on the sanctity of "intellectual property". But in general, every issue she brings up she discusses a spectrum of beliefs from Luddite to singulatarian(v3 only), from privacy interested cypherpunk to nsa spy. So in a sense, even though I didn't particularly enjoy the forcing of myself to divulge 600 pages of /. worthy trolling, it was a job well done. She could have done a little bit more on this front, though.
Second, this book brings the reader up to speed on the tech related social issues of the past 20 years or so.
Which is a problem for me. You see, slashdot, reddit, 2600, off the hook, thekult.org... all these places that I've neurotically mined for every last scrap of information have already covered everything this book covers in detail. There were some very minor stories that I hadn't encountered before but all of the major ethical issues, technologies, news stories and court cases (somewhat remarkable, since this book concerns US law) I had. And I do not think this anything special - - if you, too, have "wasted" as much of your life as I have sucking on the infonipple, and being part of the online community(yes, my membership is overdue at the eff/fsf, and I haven't spent much time with the csss this semester, oh well) --- then you have no need for this book, except for perhaps as a "tangible" representation of history, complete with references to the sorts of things that you'd expect to remember as you grow older. Actually, a digital copy of this book for this purpose wouldn't be bad either -- to carry with you on your wristwatch to do a quick 'google' on in the future, perhaps, to show people what the recent past was actually like. Diebold voting machines, the steve jackson case, the Therac 25 and web filters were just some of the tech related social issues brought into discussion by this book. Again, nothing new, no deep detail into anything, but a lot of MLP, with light reading attatched. Now granted, I realize some people weren't around for some things---and haven't trawled the archives of history yet. For them, this book may be more helpful, but see point one for reasons for caution on this.
Third, it's clearly a US-Centric book. As a US book, it may very well be decent, in terms of the law it covers. But for canada it's a square peg in a round hole. While the *issues* are important to know about, the law itself, is often very different. Unfortunately my professor takes this book as the definitive guide for Canadian law, which makes things even worse. I can't blame the author for this, but as a textbook, we really need a Canadian law addition to this. Michael geist provides a small piece of this, but we could do more to take what geist has provided and build a 'from the ground up' work from it.
Anyways one of the way this US-bias manifests is the continuing of viewing things in a big-industry vs. big-government spectrum. As if there is nothing outside of these two extremes, and the middle ground between them. There is more to life than doing whatever big government / big industry wants you to. The 3rd edition gets closer on this issue, but it just comes up again, and again.
Fourth, if you're a student, and thinking of skimping on change and getting the 2nd edition, Don't. The 3rd edition is a mashup of the 2nd, practically. The 2nd one is there with it(most of it, anyway), but it's mixed up quite a bit and you'll get lost in class easily. The 2nd one might be better, per page, than the 3rd, and the 3rd certainly has more up to date, more moderate on "IP"(= more reasonable), and definitely has more material and references within it. On the other hand the 2nd edition has a better flow to it, the privacy section is better than anything in either book elsewise, and has a lot closer connection to programming, as opposed to society(did baase once work industry, and then teach that could account for this?)
Notable things. Keep in mind, all of these could be intentional trolling attempts:
It's not like it wasn't clearly a great effort -- Baase went through a lot of material to produce this. She's been around for at least a good part of the history of the field and does bring up many of the important issues and questions concerning society, ethics, professionalism, and in general the types of things a 'Computers and Society' type course would cover, satisfying CIPS' requirement for an ethics class as well. As a textbook it was OK. Lots of questions, lots of examples.
First off, Baase seems, with this book, to be putting on a trolling hat. She is trying to provoke the student reader, to challenge their preconceived notations, and in general, to tick everyone off equally. She succeeds. Got me with the tripe on the sanctity of "intellectual property". But in general, every issue she brings up she discusses a spectrum of beliefs from Luddite to singulatarian(v3 only), from privacy interested cypherpunk to nsa spy. So in a sense, even though I didn't particularly enjoy the forcing of myself to divulge 600 pages of /. worthy trolling, it was a job well done. She could have done a little bit more on this front, though.
Second, this book brings the reader up to speed on the tech related social issues of the past 20 years or so.
Which is a problem for me. You see, slashdot, reddit, 2600, off the hook, thekult.org... all these places that I've neurotically mined for every last scrap of information have already covered everything this book covers in detail. There were some very minor stories that I hadn't encountered before but all of the major ethical issues, technologies, news stories and court cases (somewhat remarkable, since this book concerns US law) I had. And I do not think this anything special - - if you, too, have "wasted" as much of your life as I have sucking on the infonipple, and being part of the online community(yes, my membership is overdue at the eff/fsf, and I haven't spent much time with the csss this semester, oh well) --- then you have no need for this book, except for perhaps as a "tangible" representation of history, complete with references to the sorts of things that you'd expect to remember as you grow older. Actually, a digital copy of this book for this purpose wouldn't be bad either -- to carry with you on your wristwatch to do a quick 'google' on in the future, perhaps, to show people what the recent past was actually like. Diebold voting machines, the steve jackson case, the Therac 25 and web filters were just some of the tech related social issues brought into discussion by this book. Again, nothing new, no deep detail into anything, but a lot of MLP, with light reading attatched. Now granted, I realize some people weren't around for some things---and haven't trawled the archives of history yet. For them, this book may be more helpful, but see point one for reasons for caution on this.
Third, it's clearly a US-Centric book. As a US book, it may very well be decent, in terms of the law it covers. But for canada it's a square peg in a round hole. While the *issues* are important to know about, the law itself, is often very different. Unfortunately my professor takes this book as the definitive guide for Canadian law, which makes things even worse. I can't blame the author for this, but as a textbook, we really need a Canadian law addition to this. Michael geist provides a small piece of this, but we could do more to take what geist has provided and build a 'from the ground up' work from it.
Anyways one of the way this US-bias manifests is the continuing of viewing things in a big-industry vs. big-government spectrum. As if there is nothing outside of these two extremes, and the middle ground between them. There is more to life than doing whatever big government / big industry wants you to. The 3rd edition gets closer on this issue, but it just comes up again, and again.
Fourth, if you're a student, and thinking of skimping on change and getting the 2nd edition, Don't. The 3rd edition is a mashup of the 2nd, practically. The 2nd one is there with it(most of it, anyway), but it's mixed up quite a bit and you'll get lost in class easily. The 2nd one might be better, per page, than the 3rd, and the 3rd certainly has more up to date, more moderate on "IP"(= more reasonable), and definitely has more material and references within it. On the other hand the 2nd edition has a better flow to it, the privacy section is better than anything in either book elsewise, and has a lot closer connection to programming, as opposed to society(did baase once work industry, and then teach that could account for this?)
Notable things. Keep in mind, all of these could be intentional trolling attempts:
- "change" is usually corporatespeak for "getting fired". That's why employers ask if you can handle change---they want to know what you'll do when they can you after a lifetime of effort towards their cause.
- "a trusted and reliable means of authentication will be essential for the justice system". ruh roh.
- baase seems to think that at least one essential part of being human is constantly absorbing and interpreting information. Technically true, but still.
- A huge WTF on suggesting requiring racial discrimination is the ethical thing to do, when it is not present. The ethical situation is as follows. You're designing a system to profile people. You notice, being the observant bayesian, that there's no 'race' classification for people. You ask your boss--he tells you that society shouldn't treat people differently based on the colour of their skin. WHAT DO YOU DO? Her suggestion is that you should try to arrange the situation so that the colour of the skin IS inputted. While I can see some situations where such a thing is relevant, if you're not told it is, why should you assume that it should be needed? This boggles my mind. I recognize there is debate whether or not race is scientific or not, but why is it necessary to put it where it might otherwise not belong? If it was important, it'd be in the spec. This kind of detail is hard to miss.
- Good advise: "do not count on everyone else to o their jobs perfectly". Ethics in CS means a healthy dose of paranoia.
- She misses a lot of border cases. Not only is there a risk in bleeding work & personal life together, as she suggests, there is also a risk of keeping them too separate.
- more good advise: treat all modifications of code as new development.