this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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Wow thanks for posting this. I read through "On Being a ~~Computer Scientist~~ Human Being in the Time of Collapse" last night and haven't been able to shake its suggestions. The talk seemed to explicitly intend to be depressing but I found it weirdly inspiring.
I wish an ethics class were a mandatory part of more CS curriculums. The one elective I took was easily my favorite CS class and one that I think put me down the path that has lead me to be so enthralled by permacomputing (and, by proxy, the Merveilles community). It feels like far too few engineers I meet question the things they're building for their employers, and most worryingly, aren't very open to the idea of beginning to do so when presented with the idea that maybe tech doesn't solve all of our problems.
Yes, especially powerful as he, a tenured professor, looks back at his entire career and asks "why the hell am I doing this?" And freeing, in other ways e.g. perhaps it's not that I've not looked hard enough for ways to do good in the world with the CS education I had, but rather that I should stop trying to use a hammer to paint a watercolour.
Ethics class in CS curricula really suffers from a case of warring incentives, especially as research universities rely on grants and funding from tech companies and the military. (From the note on cancelling Spring '20 teaching: "Computer scientists who question the social value of technical work will be less employable than before.") I don't know if there can be an adequate response to this problem under the current higher ed system, other than perhaps to hope that there are more and more professors like Rogaway out there who see the importance of offering their students a glimpse of that alternative path, and be willing to take up the mantle of being their guides. As the professor that taught your elective did, and as I am so grateful my undergrad advisor did.