Encountering the Machine

Engineering Ethics, Contemporary and Enduring Debates, Yale University Press, 2020, by Deborah G. Johnson.

Visions of utopia – some hopeful, others fearful – have become increasingly prevalent in recent times. This groundbreaking, timely book examines expressions of the utopian imagination with a focus on the pressing challenge of how to inhabit a climate-changed world. Forms of social dreaming are tracked across two domains: political theory and speculative fiction. The analysis aims to both uncover the key utopian and dystopian tendencies in contemporary debates around the Anthropocene; as well as to develop a political theory of radical transformation that avoids not only debilitating fatalism but also wishful thinking. This book juxtaposes theoretical interventions, from Bruno Latour to the members of the Dark Mountain collective, with fantasy and science fiction texts by N. K. Jemisin, Kim Stanley Robinson and Margaret Atwood, debating viable futures for a world that will look and feel very different from the one we live in right now.

This is no longer the earth on which man lives. Heidegger 1993: 106 There is no doubt that Jorge Luis Borges is a major literary precursor of contemporary interactive and multimedia works. It is almost commonplace to see tales such as ‘Funes el memorioso’ [Funes the Memorious], ‘La biblioteca de Babel’ [The Library of Babel], or ‘El jardin de senderos que se bifurcan’ [The Garden of the Forking Paths] as prefigurations of cyberliterature. Borges' web presence is vast – from sites dedicated to ‘Webmaster Borges’, which claim that ‘the greatest influence on the Argentine writer was a phenomenon invented after his death [namely: the Internet]’ (Wolk 1999), to the all-encompassing site of the ‘Jorge Luis Borges Center for Studies and Documentation’ hosted by the University of Iowa. This chapter aims to demonstrate the depth and importance of Borges' legacy not only to cyberliterature but to discussions of the entire contemporary ‘posthuman’ paradigm. Even though Borges rarely speaks in any direct way of technology and of the cybercultural futures which it makes possible, his speculative fictions and other prose writings provide glimpses of posthuman conditions that are more fully portrayed by writers such as William Gibson and Philip K. Dick or in films such as The Matrix (Wachowski 1999) and Minority Report (Spielberg 2002). His work thereby can stake a claim to a foundational presence within contemporary debates on the future of the archive, memory and consciousness, on the machinic and the digital prosthetisation of the human, and on the pervasiveness of communications systems and their reshaping of the very notion of the literary.

Reviewed by: The Bloomsbury Introduction to Children's and Young Adult Literature by Karen Coats Lara Saguisag (bio) Karen Coats. The Bloomsbury Introduction to Children's and Young Adult Literature. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Students, educators, and scholars who are seeking comprehensive and accessible critical introductions to the study of children's and young adult literature have a few notable titles to choose from. Perry Nodelman and Mavis Reimer's The Pleasures of Children's Literature, originally published in 1991 with a third edition released in 2003, remains an essential introductory handbook on children's literature studies. In the more recent Reading Children's Literature: A Critical Introduction (2013), Carrie Hintz and Eric Tribunella cover a wide variety of forms, genres, and themes and skillfully guide readers in using the lens of age, race, indigeneity, gender, sexuality, and ability to arrive at nuanced readings of texts for young people. It seems fair to expect that a new critical introduction to children's literature studies not only match the scope and accessibility of existing titles but also offer new perspectives and content. The Bloomsbury Introduction to Children's and Young Adult Literature by Karen Coats undoubtedly meets these expectations. This thoughtfully organized, wide-ranging, and innovative book draws from cultural studies, literary studies, and child development studies in its consideration of diverse forms and genres. Chapter 1 deftly illustrates how knowledge of the histories of ideologies of childhood is fundamental to understanding the histories of literature for young people. Chapter 3 works to demystify literary theory, assuring readers that "we are always already theorists" (84); framed by an anecdote in which a teenaged girl and her friends dissect her conversation with her crush, the chapter covers a variety of theoretical paradigms including formalism, deconstructionism, New Historicism, and reader response criticism. Other chapters provide substantial discussions of poetry, picture books, films, folk narratives, nonfiction, realistic fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction. Each chapter is supplemented by case studies, prompts for writing and discussion, and suggestions for further reading, including Internet sources. These supplements will likely be effective in generating vibrant classroom discussions, increasing student engagement, and helping emerging scholars become confident, independent researchers. The volume is primarily addressed to undergraduate and graduate students, but it will also appeal to educators who are looking for creative approaches to structuring and enlivening their courses as well as experienced scholars who are committed to keeping pace with contemporary debates that are animating children's and young adult literature studies. I do wish that chapter 6, which discusses images in children's literature, did more to clarify the differences between various visual-verbal narrative forms. The chapter certainly enables readers to develop a vocabulary to discuss [End Page 147] pictures in texts for young people. It historicizes the functions of illustrations in children's books and shows how attention to visual elements as well as issues of production and audience can yield varied and rich interpretations of visual-verbal narratives. But some discussion of, say, the different ideological frameworks and histories of picture books and comics may be necessary to illustrate the complex ways pictures in visual-verbal narratives for young people are apprehended by readers across time and culture. As the whole, the book instructs readers to be responsible, inquisitive scholars. And it does so in such an openhearted manner. In her introduction to the volume, the author provides a short biography and invites readers to "call her Karen" (5). As such, Karen not only models the practice of acknowledging one's cultural position; she also deliberately establishes a tone of affability, demonstrating that an intimate, personal approach is not necessarily incompatible with meaningful scholarship. In the final chapter, Karen invites new scholars to "[enter] the professional conversation," providing comprehensive lists of journals and professional associations as well as advice on research, writing, and disseminating one's work. Throughout the book, Karen cracks jokes, shares personal anecdotes, acknowledges questions she continues to wrestle with, and urges readers to disagree with and complicate the points that she makes. In short, she displays how pleasure, uncertainty, and exchange of knowledge are part and parcel of the practice of scholarship. Bloomsbury Introduction pays attention to recent trends in children's...

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly being used in professional fields such as healthcare, law, and engineering. In these domains, errors can lead to serious consequences. Many current AI ethics approaches do not reflect the structured codes and precedent-informed reasoning that guide professional conduct. This work introduces ProEthica, a system under development that combines LLMs with role-based ontologies to support structured ethical reasoning in professional settings. The system draws on principles from professional role ethics and incorporates ethical guidelines, practice standards, and prior case decisions. As a demonstration case, it applies the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) Code of Ethics and Board of Ethical Review precedents. ProEthica includes an ontology based on engineering ethics, a precedent retrieval method using both vector similarity and ontological mappings, a framework for guiding and checking LLM outputs with structured constraints, and a validation process modeled on FIRAC (Facts, Issues, Rules, Analysis, Conclusion) reasoning. The system is intended to help professionals make ethical decisions that are consistent with established standards, not to replace human judgment. Preliminary evaluations using NSPE cases indicate that it can retrieve relevant precedents and produce structured analyses that align with engineering ethics.

A response of the engineering profession to the challenges of security, poverty and underdevelopment, environmental sustainability, and native cultures is described. Ethical codes, which govern the behavior of engineers, are examined from a historical perspective linking the prevailing codes to models of the natural world. A new ethical code based on a recently introduced model of Nature as an integral community is provided and discussed. Applications of the new code are described using a case study approach. With the ethical code based on an integral community in place, new design algorithms are developed and also explored using case studies. Implications of the proposed changes in ethics and design on engineering education are considered. Table of Contents: Preface / Acknowledgments / Introduction / Engineering Ethics / Models of the Earth / Engineering in a Morally Deep World / Engineering Design in a Morally Deep World / Implications for Engineering Education / Final Thoughts / Re erences / Author's Biography

Political Utopias: Contemporary Debates

Engineers Canada states that engineers must, “Hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public and the protection of the environment and promote health and safety within the workplace” [1]. This is frequently the only guideline directly related to the environment included in Canadian provincial and territorial Professional Engineering Codes of Ethics (PECoE) which are a primary resource for teaching engineering ethics [1]; notably, Ontario’s PECoE currently does not explicitly mention the environment [2]. Minimal formal ethical guidelines indicate interpretations of engineers’ professional responsibility with respect to the environment may vary in both industry and engineering education. With the growing focus on sustainable development alongside escalating environmental crises, a thorough investigation of engineers’ professional ethical responsibility to the environment is time-sensitive and necessary [3]. The purpose of this study is to improve understanding of how engineers and engineering students view and interpret their professional ethical responsibility to the environment and PECoE in a Canadian context. The ultimate goal of this research will be to aid the development of engineering ethics and sustainability curricula, as well as Professional Engineering Codes of Ethics. A key result from preliminary findings, is that participants feel there may be a need to explicitly include more guidelines on the environment in the Ontario PECoE.

THAT 'business ethics' is an oxymoron, like 'military intelligence' or l 'deficit spending,' is surely the most regular and tiresome conversational chestnut proffered to those of us who teach it by those who don't. (Pity the present writer, who also works in philosophy of religion.) There is some comfort, though howbeit cold- in recognizing that the joke depends for its hilarity upon a conventional wisdom which is, for once, not too wide of the mark. Business and ethics are (or are perceived to be) so incompatible and even polemical that conjoining them like this is like watching a bad Hollywood buddy movie Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy handcuffed together for yet another forty-eight hours. For the sake of revenge for the professional distress the joke occasions me, I'll gladly run the risk of seeming a bore by trying to explain it. Why is the concept of 'business ethics' so risible? Mentioning 'medical ethics' does not produce the same guffaw quotient; nor does 'engineering ethics,' nor even, oddly, 'military ethics.' (During the recent war with Iraq, Pentagon spokesmen were at great pains during media briefings to detail measures to reduce icollateral damage' and to promulgate a 'battlefield code of ethics' among the ground forces; their words were attended to in respectful silence.) Somehow, ethics and business are thought to be more incongruous than ethics and almost any other profession, with the possible exception of the law. But why should this be so? Surely much of the current attitude is the result of the Petronian excesses of the past decade. Hardly has a day gone by when the readers of even the Wall Street Journal have not been treated to news of yet another moral impropriety, to put it delicately. Affront succeeds affront: the explosion of corporate debt produced by the LBO frenzy of the '80ss; the insider trading scandals of Boesky and Drexel Burnham Lambert; the rise and fall of Michael Milken's junk-bond empire; the defense contractor procurement scandals prior to the 1988 federal election; executive 'compensation packages' rocketing into the stratosphere while quarterly profits and employee wages plod along at ground level; the eminently preventable crackup of the Exxon Valdez; and, to top it off, a savings and loan swindle whose bailout price is nearing defense budget proportions: all have contributed to a rather substantial downward revision of the moral esteem in which business is held in the

Ethics in engineering and science has become a hot topic not only on the agendas of academic institutions and funding agencies, but also among scientists and engineers themselves and the general public. Analysis of misconduct cases shows that fundamental issues concerning proper methodology as well as ethics are at stake. Traditionally, questions of methodology and ethics have been treated more or less as separate issues, or as being related but fundamentally different, while practitioners tend implicitly to see ethics as the underpinning of their methodology. I contend that methodological and ethical normativity are linked in a very fundamental way. I argue that the relationship between method and ethics deserves to be addressed more explicitly and can form the basis of a new approach towards ethical issues in science and engineering. In particular, a virtue-ethical based approach, defining the figure of the 'good practitioner', has many advantages. As an example, I consider the issue of the function and utility of ethical codes of conduct. Practice shows that these codes are seldom known to practitioners and, that when they are, practitioners have not internalised them. In other words, they do not match with notions of proper behaviour as experienced by scientists and engineers themselves. I argue that as long as the ethical codes are top-down regulations of an institution, rather than the 'living morality' of the virtuous community of scientific practice, they will remain of limited applicability.

Vestal Virgins and Engineering Ethics

Toward an Inclusive Geoethics—Commonalities of Ethics in Technology, Science, Business, and Environment

In the today's complex world, construction projects are not only measured by the classical success factors anymore. Obviously, finishing the project in time, within the budget and with the required quality is the major interest of all stakeholders in a construction project. Nevertheless, other considerations, such as sustainability, engineering ethics, and social impact of the construction gain more and more importance. This development is driven by various new law and policy all over the world. Thus, for example the United Nations Development Goals, the European Green Deal, and the widespread deployment of code of ethics will have an increasing impact on the construction industry in future. The purpose of the study is to elaborate challenges that construction project stakeholders face today and also in future, aside from the risks resulting from the classical success factors. The focus of the research lies on ethical challenges in the construction process. During their research, the authors analyzed current literature with the focus on sustainability and codes of ethics for engineers. Using literature studies and legal analysis, they provide an overview about modern risk factors in construction projects. The authors conclude that sustainability issues in general, and relating ethical concerns in particular, increase the risks of managing construction projects. The new risk factors must be considered in construction contract design as well as in planning and executing of a construction project.

The price-fixing scandal in the electrical industry that came into public view during the early 1960s set off a chain of events that profoundly affected the electrical industry. Coincidentally, a book written by Mr. P. L. Alger et. al. on ethical problems in engineering was published during the same era. Meanwhile the unfolding effects of the price-fixing scandal on the electrical industry forced many engineers to reexamine their previously held attitudes and modify their behavior to suit new standards. The intent of this paper is to focus on ethical dilemma more than criminal behavior. This article first examines engineering ethics as a subset of philosophy and differentiates ethics from related areas of philosophy. Publicly available information relating to some persons, once active in the field of engineering, is examined to identify their personal character, moral behavior and personal ethics. The AIEE published its first code of ethics in 1912 after years of debate and negotiations. With a long-standing code of ethics to provide clear guidance on expected behavior; some might ask how this scandal could have ever occurred. The article provides some thoughts on not only how scandal occurred in 1960, but how some form of scandal is still happening today and why it seems to recur. The article then examines more recent events to understand how those events may have changed historic attitudes and brought about new ethical concerns. The paper presents a personal view on ethics that spans nearly 50-years of professional training; beginning as a student of Mr. Charles F. Dalziel in 1960. Later as a member of the engineering staff at General Electric, contact with Mr. Alger gave new understanding and meaning to ethical behavior. Mr. Alger also provided unique insight into the history of engineering ethics. Finally the paper brings the subject forward to the present time; a time when many citizens seem to be concerned about the ethics of large institutions; government, academia and industry.

An engineering ethics assignment through student skits was piloted in the spring 2006 with 180 freshman students enrolled in an introductory engineering course at Virginia Tech. Students, assigned into groups of 4-8, were given one of five ethics case studies documenting realistic engineering scenarios, a set of guidelines, a performance assessment rubric, and instructed to prepare a 5-10 minute skit integrating the essential elements of the given case study. The student groups were given two weeks to organize, prepare, and practice before performing their skit for the class. Students were required to complete a hand-out, provided during the skit session, identifying which of twelve Rules of Practice as part of the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) ethical codes had been violated and provide a brief response to a set of open-ended ethical questions. Results of the student hand-out, student surveys and focus group interviews are discussed.