In 2011, Marc Andreessen famously predicted that software would eat the world. Eight years later, this prophesy is clearly coming to fruition -- and software's contact with our broader world is bringing with it novel ethical dilemmas for those who endeavor to build it. More than ever, we software engineers are likely to find ourselves in new frontiers with respect to society, the law or our own moral compass -- but often without any formal training or even acknowledgement with respect to the ethical dimensions of our work. In this talk, we will explore some of these new dilemmas, not to offer sanctimonious judgement but rather to try to equip ourselves to have the important new conversations demanded of our expanded role with respect to society.
Watch the talk Check the slidesBryan Cantrill is CTO at Joyent, where since 2010 he has been actively involved in Joyent's SmartOS, Triton and Manta technologies. Previously a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems, Bryan led the team that designed and implemented DTrace, a facility for dynamic instrumentation of production systems that won the Wall Street Journal’s top Technology Innovation Award in 2006. He received the ScB magna cum laude with honors in Computer Science from Brown University.
