Topics for electrical engineering ethics

[frogdogbb]

I am having trouble coming up with a topic for a research paper dealing with something related to the Eletrical engineering/ technology field. It has to be something that has happened within the last five years. Any idea's?
Thanks

 

[berkeman]

About ethics in the EE field, and about a real incident that took place in the last 5 years? Or can it just be about EE and ethics, and about things that may have happened in the last 5 years?

Depending on the answer to that, one possibility would certainly be advanced wiretaps/EM intercepts/snooping, mostly in relation to national security. You can talk about how much supercomputing power is being used by the NSA and why, in addition to the different EE technologies that are used for data gathering and processing. Pretty interesting subject overall, even though there are difficult civil liberty ramifications involved.

In other areas, you could talk about the ethics of Microsoft's buisiness practices in the last 5 years (and maybe compare and contrast that to the early years of Microsoft, as described in the book "Fire in the Valley"). I'm mostly Microsoft-neutral, so I don't know if there's anything juicy in there in the last 5 years like there was in the first 5 years, though.

How much EE content is there in the genetic testing controversy? Maybe there are some new electroncs involved in the testing that may have some ethical/moral facets.

Just throwing out some ideas.

 

[berkeman]

Ooo, ooo, how about this one? The ethics of members of the EE forum on the Physics and Math forums, trying to keep an uninformed poster from making a home-brew electrical device to use in his food sales business (and maybe getting a bunch of his customers sick...)

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=153282

 

[frogdogbb]

I think I will stay away from any homemade food warming/containment devices. I will let you experts lend advise as you choose
The paper assingment is quite vauge at this point I asked for clarification from my instruction via email but no response. Anyway I think it is supposed to be about a documented case like the "Challenger" incident type of situation. I should pick a side and support that case. I just need something that has happened within' the last five years?

 

[berkeman]

I just googled engineering ethics, and got lots of hits. You can browse through some of these to see if they apply to EE, or you could add the keyword electrical into the search terms to let google do some of the pruning for you. Might yield some other ideas.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=engineering+ethics

 

[brewnog]

Ooo, ooo, how about this one? The ethics of members of the EE forum on the Physics and Math forums, trying to keep an uninformed poster from making a home-brew electrical device to use in his food sales business (and maybe getting a bunch of his customers sick...)

Haha, indeed!

The ideas which sprung to my mind involve weaponry. Ethical issues are more than present for the use of things like stun guns, Tasers, and the heat ray things that have been discussed in depth recently.

 

[WFO]

The paper assingment is quite vauge at this point I asked for clarification from my instruction via email but no response.

Discuss the ethics of a professor that requires a student to communicate in electronic form but does not respond.

 

[frogdogbb]

yea that would be a good one WFO I guess he is pretty busy. I decieded on a engineering topic unrelated to electrical since I could not find many situations. I re-read the instructions and it says engineering problem and does not specify on it being in our field so I choose the Levy system in New Orleans mainly because it is well documented easy to find info.