DIMACS Workshop on Design for Values: Ethical, Social and Political Dimensions of Information Technology

February 28 - March 1, 1998
Princeton University, Department of Computer Science

Organizers:

Helen Nisssenbaum, University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, helen@princeton.edu

Bernard Chazelle, Computer Science Department, Princeton University

Contact: Sandy Barbu, barbu@cs.princeton.edu

The workshop will offer four panel presentations beginning Saturday, February 28 at 9:30 a.m. The final panel will take place Sunday, March 1, 10:00 - 12:00 a.m.

Panels will be organized around the central theme of how computer and information systems are shaped by societal and ethical values, including broadly encompassing values such as fair distribution of goods and power, freedom, autonomy, sovereignty, and privacy as well as more specific human ends such as wealth, efficacy, and rights to free expression, association, private and property.

Panel presenters, representing the fields of computer science, the social sciences, philosophy, and policy studies, will discuss values embedded in specific systems, including but not limited to the net, encryption, security, autonomous agents, educational software, user-interfaces, and the structure of information systems. They may be guided by questions such as:

• How do values influence or determine the shape of computer and information systems?
• Whose ends, interests or values are best, and most frequently, represented in contemporary systems?
• By what means are values embedded in systems -- public policy, markets, or the discretion of individual scientists and engineers?
• Are some of these sources more ``legitimate'' than others?
• What values ought to shape computer and information systems?
• Is there some shared sense of public, community or individual welfare that ought to drive the design of systems?
• Is it enough to ``let the market decide''?

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