Bill, > What I'm getting at is that the tools can be built > to do fair > political engineering, but they don't enforce > "fair." So is the > burden of morality on the creator of tools or on the > users?
Interesting point, but look at it this way. Car manufacturers design cars to be safe, but is the so-called burden of morality on them when someone has a several beers and ends up killing a pedestrian? You can use a plastic bag to kill someone, but the design of a plastic bag was not designed for that purpose, but granted, it can be used in that way. I don't think the creator should worry about misuse of their applications. We all design and create for the best interests of a party, and granted, some applications can be misused, but surely that realm falls into whether the designer feels guilty about the possible uses of their product or whether it is impractical and plain paranoid to believe someone will misuse a program at every turn. In addition, how do you define "fairness"? Maybe all programs should now be defined with an agreed "fairness" boundary? That'll be interesting, suddenly we'll have loads of Fairness IT Consultants running around... :) Ben Crane UK __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 9784
