Rocco D’Ambrosca: 02/22/2010
In his essay, “What is Computer Ethics”, Jim Moor makes the claim that computing will transform social institutions. The purpose of this paper will be to evaluate and determine the merits of this claim. It is this author’s belief, that Moor’s claim made in 1985, was an extremely insightful and almost prophetic vision of what our contemporary reality has come to be.
Moor begins by laying the groundwork for the discipline of computer ethics, through defining and clarifying the uniqueness of computers and illuminating possible problems that arise within the field. Moor states that during his time there were both conceptual and policy vacuums in the area of computer technology. He believed that, “what is needed in such cases is an analysis which provides a coherent conceptual framework within which to formulate a policy for action” (Moor 1). This leads inevitably to his conception of what makes computers special and thus why they require special ethical consideration. He believed, “what is revolutionary about computers is logical malleability” (Moor 4). “Computers are logically malleable in that they can be shaped and molded to do any activity that can be characterized in terms of inputs, outputs, and connecting logical operations. Logical operations are the precisely defined steps which take a computer from one state to the next. The logic of computers can be massaged and shaped in endless ways through changes in hardware and software.” (Moor 4). He believed that this logical capability of computers was analogous to the raw power and potential of the steam engine within the Industrial Revolution. All this leading to the vision of clarity that, “The computer is the nearest thing we have to a universal tool. Indeed, the limits of computers are largely the limits of our own creativity” (Moor 4). With such unlimited potential and universality of use as a tool how could it not be anything but inevitable that computers would transform social institutions?
The proof of Moor’s assertion and affirmation of his claim that computers would transform social institutions can be seen most clearly in his comparative model between the Industrial and Computer Revolution. He believed that they both occur(ed) in two major stages. He states that the first stage was the technological introduction stage, during which, “inventions and processes were introduced, tested, and improved” (Moor 5). The second stage Moor calls the technological permeation stage, where the new technology(ies) are implemented and the inherent transformations occur and permeate through all aspects of society.
Moor defines transformed as when, “the basic nature or purpose of an activity or institution is changed” (Moor 5). The transformation can be quantified in the different type of questions that can be asked before and after said transformation occurs. “During the introduction stage computers are understood as tools for doing standard jobs. A typical question for this stage is “how well does a computer do such and such activity? Later during the permeation stage, computers become an integral part of the activity. A typical question for this stage is “What is the nature and value of such and such an activity?” (Moor 5). Moor is saying that just as most tools eventually come to define the actual work being done, so will computers.
It is the logical malleability, universality, and almost unlimited uses that the computer as a tool can be applied to, which forces the truth of its inevitable transformation of social institutions. Just as hunter gathering society evolved into agrarian, and agrarian into industrial, we have become a computerized society. Today the near prophetic prediction by Jim Moor in 1985 couldn’t be any truer. Just about everything we do today involves computers: farmers keep track of their livestock and harvests with computers, bankers manage accounts and calculate interest with computers, government records and work is all done digitally, students go to online universities, architects draft and design buildings with digital 3d models, doctors and biologists create digital 3d models of cells and DNA in the study of diseases, musicians and producers can now create music completely digitally, and children’s toys have been replaced with computer games. Although many of these activities existed before computers, they have been greatly changed, enhanced, and brought to almost unthinkable levels of efficiency and capability. Some have been completely transformed and others simply couldn’t exist without computers.
Within popular culture it is easiest to see the transformation, as defined by Moor, in the music industry. As briefly mentioned, music can now be created and recorded with computers. Why is this profound? Computers are far less expensive now than any of the analogue equipment once within recording studios. This allows a far greater access to musicians to create music. Before the modern computer age, if a musician wanted to record their music on a professional level they would have to save up hundreds and even thousands of dollars to book all the time they needed in a recording studio. Now, for a modest investment a musician can make a onetime purchase of a computer and a few minor peripherals to record and produce a fully professional album that can compete with the best of any recording studios. The computer has given the working musician the ability to compete on the same level with corporate big name labels and recording studios as if fire had been stolen from the gods.
Even further, with the aid of the internet they can take their professionally created music and bring it to market on outlets like iTunes or even through their own website selling CD’s as direct mail orders with payments being made by credit card and deposited directly into their bank accounts with the aid of PayPal. The internet has done great good for individual artists by giving them the power and ability to get to market independently without the need of a major corporate label. The music industry is no longer a tightly controlled monopoly, but an all out free-for-all, that is still constantly in flux due to the massive impact of the last 10-15 years as the computer and the internet have rewritten the rules of the game.
Besides the institutions transformed by computers, there is at the very least one that would never have existed without them. Space Exploration as preformed by NASA could never have occurred without the aid of computers. Without computers to calculate and help engineer the rockets and spacecrafts, a man would never have orbited the Earth, let alone walk on the Moon or even dare to dream of exploring Mars and beyond. Once the rockets and spaceships were built, they would have been extremely difficult if not impossible to pilot without the aid of computer guidance systems calculating thrust, orbital maneuvers, or reentry orientation. The computers on the Apollo capsules, the Space Shuttle, and International Space Station, also monitor and control all the life support systems and communications back to Earth. The computer completely transformed the institution of manned exploration in general by allowing the birth of a new frontier of exploration, Outer Space.
No matter what level of society you look at today, from the playfully mundane to the monumentally important, it is all done with the assistance and occasionally even with the prerequisite of computers. Jim Moor’s claim that computers would transform society is ridiculously self evident within the world today.
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