CSCE 390: Professional Issues in Computer Science and Engineering (Fall 2013)

Questionnaires

Notes
Philosophical Belief Systems, Part I: Idealism and Realism
Presentation by Ms. Helen Fields, director of the CEC Satellite Office of the USC Career Center, used on 2012-01-24. (These notes are still useful.)
Philosophical Belief Systems, Part II: Pragmatism and Existentialism
Three Simple Ethical Cases: Absolutist and Relativist Positions
The Ethical Decision-Making Process
Psychology and Computer Ethics
The Computing Field as a Profession
Computer-Related Codes of Ethics

Quizzes (In-Class Exercises)

Tests

Homework
Points per assignment.

See lecture log for a more complete list, which includes assignments for which no handout was given.
Here is a writing rubric written by Dr. Heidi Cooley in the Media Arts program. (Thanks to Prof. Buell for passing it on.) I am not bound by this rubric, but it may be useful for you to consider when writing your essays.

1. (HW1) Do the exercises at the end of chapters 1 and 2 of [B]. Due date: Thursday, August 29, 2013.
   • Your homework essay must be typed, double-spaced, in 12-point font. The essay, in total, must be no longer than two pages. Please type the questions as well as your answers.
   • Please turn in hard copy, but save the source file, because you may be asked to submit an electronic version later.
   • For question 1 on p.15, provide only one occurrence and why you think it should have been included.
   • For question 2 on p.15, provide only one example of each of the two kinds and explain why they meet the conditions of the question.
   • For question 3 on p.15, provide only one kind of problem and explain why the computer has raised a unique dilemma.
2. (HW2, due Thursday, September 19, 2013; this assignment will satisfy the professional activities requirement mentioned in the grading policy) Choose a company where you would like to apply for a position. Write:
   • A one-page overview of the company
   • A one-page overview of the position that you would apply for
   • A one-page resume geared towards that position
   • A half-page essay on what you need to learn or do to be competitive for the position
   • Attend the SET Career Fair on Wednesday, September 17, and write a half-page essay describing your experience
   • Register on Jobmate at the USC Career Center. Write a statement that you registered on the first page of your homework submission document.
     The whole submission consists of four pages.
3. (HW3) Do the exercises at the end of chapter 3 and 4 of [B]. Due date: Thursday, September 26, 2013. A two-page paper (roughly half a page per question) is expected. Please also return the inventory with this homework.
4. (HW4) Do the exercise at the end of chapter 6 of [B]. Due date: Thursday, October 3, 2013. I expect at least one page.
5. (HW5) Do the exercise at the end of chapter 7 of [B]. Due date: Thursday, October 24, 2013. I expect at least one page.
6. (HW6) Do exercises 1 and 4 at the end of chapter 9 of [B]. Due date: Thursday, October 31, 2013.
7. (HW7) Choose a topic of professional interest that includes a non-trivial ethical issue from ACM TechNews archives. Prepare a 5-slide PowerPoint presentation in which (1) you summarize the topic (with appropriate references), (2) you apply the 8-step ethical decision-making process to the problem, (3) you apply the ACM Code or the ACM/IEEE-CS Code. The PowerPoint presentation is due by 11:55pm on November 20, 2013. It must be submitted using the departmental dropbox. All students should be prepared to present on November 21, 2013. Some students will be asked to present in class on November 21; others on December 5, the last day of class. Students are welcome and encouraged. to volunteer to present on November 7, 2013.

Lecture Log

Student Presentations

The USC Blackboard has a site for this course.

Some useful links:

1. Career-related links
   1. Career Center at CEC
   2. Career Center at USC (main site)
   3. ACM Career and Job Center
   4. ACM CareerNews
   5. ACM Computing Degrees and Careers Guide
2. Geoffrey Sayre-McCord. "Kant's Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Very Brief Selective Summary of Sections I and II (local copy).
3. W. Russ Payne's summary: "Aristotle on Virtue" (linked on 2013-09-12).
4. "Without Test Tubes, 3 Win Nobel in Chemistry," an article by Kenneth Chang, New York Times, October 10, 2013 (local copy).
5. "Internet Access is Not a Human Right," an article by Vinton G. Cerf, New York Times, January 4, 2012 (local copy).
6. "What is Artificial Intelligence?" An article by Richard Powers, New York Times, February 5, 2011, about the IBM Jeopardy-playing Watson program (local copy)
7. The PBS NOVA Show "Smartest Machine on Earth" describes the IBM Jeopardy-playing program Watson
8. The IBM Watson web site (also can be reached this way).
9. Some comments by Carnegie Mellon professor Eric Nyberg and graduate students Nico Schlaefer and Hideki Shima, who worked on the IBM Watson project.
10. Building Watson: An Overview of the DeepQA Project David Ferrucci, Eric Brown, Jennifer Chu-Carroll, James Fan, David Gondek, Aditya A. Kalyanpur, Adam Lally, J. William Murdock, Eric Nyberg, John Prager, Nico Schlaefer, Chris Welty. _AI Magazine, vol.31, no.3 (Fall 2010). (full text available only to AAAI members).
11. Peter J. Denning. "The Computing Field: Structure." April 2008 (rev. 9/14/08). Typescript. Naval Postgraduate School. (local copy)
12. M.T. Chi, R. Glaser, and E. Rees. "Expertise in Problem Solving." In: R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), Advances in the Psychology of Human Intelligence (vol. 1). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1982 (local copy).
13. The ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (html)
14. The Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice (Version 5.2) as recommended by the ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Task Force on Software Engineering Ethics and Professional Practices and jointly approved by the ACM and the IEEE-CS as the standard for teaching and practicing software engineering (html)
15. Gotterbarn, D. and Miller, K. W. 2004. "Computer ethics in the undergraduate curriculum: case studies and the joint software engineer's code." J. Comput. Small Coll. 20, 2 (Dec. 2004), 156-167 (local copy, pdf).
16. Links concerning professional codes of ethics
    1. The ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
    2. The ACM Code of Ethics: Flyer with Abridged Version
    3. The Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice
    4. The Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics (from the site of Computer Professional for Social Responsibility)
    5. Gotterbarn, D. and Miller, K. W. 2004. Computer ethics in the undergraduate curriculum: case studies and the joint software engineer's code. J. Comput. Small Coll. 20, 2 (Dec. 2004), 156-167.
    6. Local copy of the above.
    7. Peter Aiken, Robert M. Stanley, Juanita Billings, and Luke Anderson. "Using Codes of Conduct to Resolve Legal Disputes." Computer, 43, 4 (April 2010), pp.29-34 (local copy, pdf).
    8. "Codes of Ethics in English" Online Ethics Center for Engineering 10/13/2009 National Academy of Engineering Accessed: Monday, April 12, 2010 (Note that the ACM/IEEE-CS Software Engineering and Professional Practice was not on this page when accessed.)
17. Links related to current events
    1. New York Times article of 2011-02-16 about how Egypt was disconnected from the internet on January 28, 2011: local copy, original article (notice comments link)
    2. Bloomberg News article on Internet "Kill Switch" Authority: local copy , original article .
18. Links related to carreer planning
    1. Quintessential Careers (TM) article by Randall Hanssen
    2. Career Planning Guide for IEEE Members
19. Norman Matloff's Introduction to the vi Text editor