Newsmaker: Debating the morality behind software development

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Using your logic, wouldn't it also be fair to say that somebody who was instrumental in designing the cell phone would have faced those same issues because a pedophile can use a cell phone for nefarious purposes?
Booch: The question is whether I, as a technologist, add features that potentially eat away at personal privacy but also enable the use of a law enforcement agency to track this person? Which way do I push this because, as a technologist, I have the ability to deliver things to people who don't know how to do that technology. Nonetheless, they are the ones who will make policy that would be impacted by what I create.

Isn't this again an issue for the consumer--whether it be an organization or corporation or some place in the public sector, rather than something you lay at the feet of the people responsible for the creative level? I mean you work for IBM...
Booch: Correct.

So what you do in front of your keyboard is not inherently good or evil. It's what IBM does with that technology which would presumably have an impact. I recall a few years ago a book describing IBM's interactions with the Third Reich before the war.
Booch: Right.

The Web is an incredibly subversive agent and it's the individuals who are going to make the difference, not the policy makers.

So how far can you logically push the argument before it becomes, "well yeah, sure, but..."
Booch: What I love about this discussion is that we're seeing a dialogue here that's starting to open up in the software field. It's already been there in the worlds of physics, chemistry and biology. The very fact that this dialogue is going on (in the computer business) in some ways is a suggestion to me that our industry is beginning to mature because at least these things are on the table.

Do you really think so? Bill Joy's article on the risks of nanotechnology came out and kicked up a fuss. But the morality question you're raising isn't something that gets the time of day in this industry. Look, I've written several columns chastising the powers that be in Silicon Valley for its policy vis-a-vis China.
Booch: Right.

I'm not a China basher and I know the realities of doing business. But there's a stone wall of apathy about this issue. Most people in Silicon Valley don't give damn.
Booch: You see that's where the individual comes into play...and can make some incredible differences. He or she might find ways to penetrate the barriers that these countries put up. It's a moral decision for me to say, "I'm going to actively do that because I believe in the open and free flow of information despite a particular government's policy." An individual can very much make a difference in this regard. The Web is an incredibly subversive agent and it's the individuals who are going to make the difference, not the policy makers.

Allow me to play devil's advocate for a moment.
Booch: Please.

If computer scientists dig in their heels at even the possibility that their work might later get used by organizations that they politically find not to their liking, do you risk being called a Luddite? That is, you're willing to innovate up to this point and no more because peering over the abyss, you don't like what you think you're seeing.
Booch: Well, now you get to a wonderfully deep philosophical issue. Do I hold back? The difficulty is that science has this really sneaky way of oozing through all the pores...Even though I would personally prefer to make the decision to say, "No, I'm not going to do that," I still have the responsibility to educate those who are in a position in the policy-making realm, so that they understand the implications of what they're doing.

In my lectures I tend to end it with this little-bitty sound bite, which talks about how it's an incredible privilege and responsibility to be a software developer. We collectively and literally change the world. I can't think of any other industry that has impacted every other business in the way that we as humans and civilizations connect. What a cool business to be in.

More Newsmakers

[projectnation]

Horrible Interview, Charles

I hardly ever post on here but just cannot stand it when a reporter get so belligerent with their guest. Wish I got paid to ask questions like "And so?". Anyway, great idea horrible interview.

[charlie cooper]

Um, not really

thanks for your feedback but you totally misintrepreted here. i really enjoyed my interview with grady. i'll let grady speak for himself but i think he had a good time as well. but my job isn't to take dictation. it's to challenge and probe. grady's a very smart man and he made his case eloquently. there was no disrespect intended - and i don't think he came away thinking that was the case.

[Test99.1]

Second The Comment

For an interviewer to play devil's advocate to an interviewee's position is a familiar and unexceptionable technique.

But that was not how I read Charlie Cooper's questions. Whatever he meant to say, what I heard was aggressive and ethically challenged questioning. Sometimes you get only one chance to make a bad impression.

[Zimm2]

The EULA is about as immoral as you can get...

Morality issues start way before you start thinking about how
software is used. Just look at the average EULA; the customer is
screwed no matter how bad the software is... The average
developer doesn't even stand behind his or her product. That's
were I believe this discussion needs to start!

[baike]

ivory tower

Come back to reality. This is such an ivory tower discussion. Booch and his buddies have the time and money to contemplate 'should I', while the average developer in the US is scared his job is going overseas. Do you really believe that a developer in the US will say no to any work, when there are a billion Indians who will do the same work at half the rate (or less)?

Also, Booch sounds pretty high on developers, as if they're turning lead to gold or something. Does he realize that whatever we code a machine to do, a person can already do? The only advantage the machine brings is speed and scale.

[bvdon]

Your fellowship has been revoked!

How did this guy get to be an IBM Fellow? His philosophy on
software morality is not very well thought out and he is putting too
much responsibility on the programmer and not the business
person driving the project. What world does this guy live in?

[Snewton628]

The Lack of Perspective

First, it would be more proper to describe Grady as "one of the inventors of UML", not THE. There was, as I recall, three primary visionaries involved.
Second, Grady did NOT represent his input as a thought-through personal answer to the question of the moral responsibility of the individual technician or developer. He was pointing out that the fact that such questions are now being asked indicate that many of our innovators have gotten past the "Gee Whiz" stage and have begun to think about the potential impacts of their efforts on society. Anyone who finds that irrelevant, or the province of the managers only should check the archives of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, where the German officers made that argument much more forcibly, and where it was resounding (and correctly, in my view) rejected.

[basraw]

If developer A doesn't want to build it..

1)
If developer A doesn't want to build it..
Developer B will and developer B will get paid while A goes hungry.

"But that's not a question that the software developer gets presented with. That's something for the city of London to consider based upon its needs.
Booch: Yes, but at the ultimate level, the software developer can say, "Do I want to actually build a system that potentially could violate human rights?""

[wildthought]

I was only following orders...

I am not suprised by the comments that feel it should not be a programmers responsibility to think about what they are building and its impact on society. I am however dismayed. Taken to its extreme we the people who made and installed the gas chambers (pretend they were independant contractors) were very much morraly responsible for the deaths that occurred in the holocaust.

Do we really want to live in a society where the government can and does track our individual movement through software? We of all people know how close that Orwellian nightmare is to beocoming technologically feasible. It is one thing to be aplotical and not care, it is quite another level of immorality to participate in the erosion of our civil liverties and that of others. Go Grady!

[lkrupp]

If Hitler or ToJo had the bomb...

Read the book Hiroshima Day One. The American physicists did
indeed discuss moral issues as to the building of the first atomic
bomb. All one has to do is imagine if those scientists had come
to the conclusion that the bomb should not be constructed and
had refused to do further work. Both Nazi Germany and Japan
had bomb projects and would have built one sooner or later.
And of not them then some other despot down the line. Where
might we be if that had happened?

The whole interview was an exercise in futility and wrong
headed thinking. If developer A doesn't add the feature being
morally debated then developer B WILL add it. Developer A can
do nothing to prevent it other than run off at the mouth.
Splitting the atom, cloning a human being or building a
computer, once the genie is out of the bottle moral arguments
mean nothing. The best one can hope for is to control the issue
through regulation or negotiation.

[spothannah]

Hitler/Tojo

As the catcher/philosopher said: "It isn't over until it's over." The system is not complete and so there is no "right" answer. Maybe by our winning we are not creating a worse Hitler/Tojo. If Germany would have won WWI maybe Hitler would have been ended up an artist or architect. My point is no one knows how it's going to be so we have to act with incomplete knowledge. And then, we have to live with the knowledge that we "acted without knowing" that's the nature of this event we call life. So far, I have learned that the only freedom we have is "choice" and maybe that is illusory. However, if even "choice" is not influenced by freedom in the sense that we are "free to choose" then it appears to me that we are just part of some program that is crunching along to some "preprogrammed" answer and then what "freedom" do we have? I fear either answer.

[lingsun]

Why not question the morality of Google helping to oppress Chinese?

What they've done should be a crime.

[pwoon]

Americans are oppressed

Did you ask the Chinese if they're being oppressed? In my opinion, Americans are being oppressed, but would Americans say they are?

[spothannah]

morality

Read Kierkegaard. Do your best. Nobody here gets out alive. Love.

[R.Jefferson]

Morality and ethics are relative

The logic a business uses as opposed to a person is very different. A person may be a thoughtful and principled person on a human to human level.

A business is principled in making money. The transactions that occur are between an impersonal group (a business) and a consumer (a person), so there?s no meaningful human interaction taking place. The profit motive is the guiding principle of the business world and morality and ethics are in direct conflict with the profit motive.

[cemptor]

The debate isn't really particular to software development

One of the worst interviews I've ever read...

Not so much the interviewer as the interviewee. Lost some of my respect for Grady Booch, who makes vague allusions to morality, without expanding on what he means...

The debate isn't really particular to software development as it is to any profession. Do you believe in the end result of what you do? Can you connect the dots and understand the ultimate result - expected and side effect (as in pollution, social consequences, etc.) of what you do.

It does need to be raised for software developers too, who more often than not, are more focused on their methods and tools than the end goals. I know lots who are brilliant at programming, but couldn't care less about what the business goals of the software they write are.

[vlgreenleaf]

Interesting, coming from someone who....

Started out in the Air Force..and made much of his fortune because of defense. He can speak from experience.

[mr e]

balderdash!

ethics doesn't come into it, this is just a way of making software engineers think they're more than mere number crushers. the final comment that being in the business is 'cool' is a giveaway - the interviewee simply wants to inflate the importance of himself and his co-workers in the industry, to render something dull and nerdish as interesting, hip and significant. either you're a 'moral' person or you're not, and there are many degrees and definitions of morality. if you adopt a strictly ethical approach you absolutely won't work on certain things that go against your personal 'code', but - as someone has already pointed out - if YOU don't someone else certainly will, and you'll go hungry. naturally cnet, which feeds off the software industry and shares its insecurities would like to inflate its importance, and enhance their own 'standing' by association, but that doesn't mean this is a question worth thinking about for more than 2 seconds.

[gbooch]

Feedback

Not surprisingly, reaction to my interview was polarized; this is
an emotional topic. That being said, i must commend t
his reader who really grokked my point. While some of the
comments posted in reaction to the interview accused Charles of
being belligerent, I never saw it that way: this is an important
and little-discussed subject, and Charles asked me some good,
hard questions. Thank you, Charles.