[liedra]

I'm a technology ethicist (with a BSc in CS though!), so I have to jump in here and say that society-aware and ethical design principles are seriously missing. Things like how to involve the stakeholders (not just the client, but anyone who might be affected or who thinks they may be affected, or who are simply interested!) in your design process, how to decide whether your technology/program/etc. is actually wanted by society (e.g. the Genetically Modified Organisms issue in Europe, where despite the science being awesome, the public just didn't want it due to the behind-their-backs political wrangling that was going on). And last but not least, how to make sure that, before you start implementing your amazing idea, your idea is acceptable to society. Not accepted, since that's just a matter for compromise in the end, and compromise is not what ethics is about (it's about choice!).

Technology has a bad habit of arriving, and then the mess being sorted out later. It'd be great to get those creating it to realise the impact they will be making on society and do something about it before it creates the mess. Of course, regular feedback loops on how it's all going throughout the lifetime of the project are also necessary -- just look at the facebook debacle recently! And the Google wifi scandal! And I could list a whole bunch of other seriously problematic incidents in the last 10 years (which, incidentally, is around about when I had just started my CS degree).

I realise this is mostly a pipe dream, and that most CS students snore through any "ethics" classes they may have, but instead of these "why are we here?" classes, perhaps integrating ethical design principles into the general procedures for software engineering would be a start.