Considering that Social Sciences are in midst of a replication crisis with no end in sight I'm not that sure they have anything useful to offer, except perhaps how to best do p-hacking to get results that one wants.
The claim that computing is a social science because it has big effect on society is simply bollocks (This was explicitly claimed in the article, heck it had a subtitle "Why Computing Is a Social Science").
The effects of computing to society definitely is social science. But social sciences have exactly zero to offer on how to, as an example, define an upper bound for certain algorithm.
Just as physics has massive impact on the world the actual act of doing physics had nothing to do with social sciences. How on earth does social sciences help me to solve some particularily nasty partial differential equation? How the results are used are yet again part of social sciences as that talks about what happens to society, but the actual physics is completely out of it.
And as I said at the start, the track record of Social Sciences is not too good. I'm quite doubtful they can even say anything valid on the actual matters that fall under it.
I agree that computer science isn't a social science, but I think the social aspects of computer science have a lot more to do with what computer science grads do than upper bounds on algorithms. Most of what we're doing is about making products more attractive to customers.
Considering that Computer Sciences are in a software crisis since the 70ies, with no end in sight I'm not that sure they have anything useful to offer, except bloat, sidechannel attacks, cargo culting and enabling of BS-jobs, which they promised to eliminate.
Do CS students not already take social sciences classes as part of the general degree requirements at their university?
At MIT, every undergraduate is required to eight courses in arts, humanities, or social sciences. That works out to taking one arts, humanities, or social science class per semester. Specifically, you have to take one from art, one from humanities, and one from social science. You also have to pick a particular field and take a series of courses in that field.
Caltech is similar, but not quite as structure. Every undergraduate must take 36 units of humanities (Caltech has a different unit scale than most others--one term of most classes earns you 9 units, and there are 3 terms per academic year) , 36 units of social science, and 36 units of humanities or social sciences.
For someone who took the minimum number of units possible to get a CS degree at Caltech, 22% of their coursework would be in humanities or social sciences. 20% for someone who took the average CS course load.
I'd just assumed that it was like that at most other schools too.
I agree that there should be room for ethics but the recommendations in the article seem extreme and lacking.
Especially the "Web development" example in section 2 seems to be quite off. In fact the counterargument for section 2 seems to be very convincing!
CS/IT is such a broad, rapidly progressing field that you cannot be prepared enough on technical subjects.
As someone who has no formal CS education I'm impacted immensely by this. I don't only need to keep up with current technology (mostly in my free time) but also often had to catch up on topics that my peers learned in University.
I'm not complaining though. I love it. But to say that there is _easily_ enough room for additional, non-technical/mathematical subjects seems to be quite unrealistic! Especially if we look at the hiring practices of our industry. Apparently having a degree is not nearly enough even from a technical standpoint.
I majored in CS in college, and I would say there is actually easily enough room for additional, non-technical/mathematical subjects in the curriculum.
As part of my major, I was required to take: two calculus courses, two physics (or chemistry–but almost nobody did) courses, linear algebra, and two discrete math courses. I can confidently say that aside from some very basic physics from the first of the two classes, I have used absolutely none of the knowledge in any of those courses in my life, and if we are just talking about my career (mostly working on Etsy and Trello), then I haven't even used the physics. The rest, I have effectively forgotten completely.
Some of my CS electives also proved not to be that useful for much; for example, my courses on computer graphics, compilers, and operating systems. I retain some basic knowledge from those courses which sometimes come in handy for quickly understanding tangentially-related concepts, but definitely nothing to spend entire semesters on.
Of course, I'm not arguing that nobody who studies computer science should learn the things I've listed, but it seems silly to me to make them required. I took both my calculus and physics courses during my first year of college, and by my third year, I had probably forgotten almost 100% of it. In terms of my career trajectory, and even in terms of the value of knowledge/education for the sake of being knowledgable/educated, it was a complete waste of my time and money.
Often times, I wish I was able to learn a wider variety of things in college.
I think the bigger issue here is that computer science is so tightly coupled with software engineering. I hope that as time goes on, we get better at separating the disciplines in the same way that we've separated other sciences from engineering (e.g. chemistry vs chemical engineering, physics vs mechanical/civil engineering, etc.).
I like the idea that we should make the fact that it isn't real science concrete so people know what they're getting into.
Allying it with the bit of universities that have abandoned any idea of the value of ideas being linked to actual evidence though is a terrible idea.
Make it part of the engineering department, those guys get the meeting place between a technical discipline and something that has to actually exist in the real world.
No, much of computing belongs in the business school, communications department. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and all the ad-supported "tech" companies are part of the advertising industry. Put all the application-related courses for low-level computer science over there. Web and app development go there.
Classic hardcore CS, where people make distributed databases, new algorithms, and robot control systems, worry about proof of correctness, and study automata theory, is part of mathematics.
Looks like STEMvy acting up again - trouble with jobs in sector again? My mind may be frayed cynical but this bears resemblence to the same old bullshit of previous decades of academics politics; trying to bully their way onto the gravytrain while calling it "interdisciplinary" but only adding one STEM course at best while treating them as the well of all evils in the world, something they should certainly know better than given evil long predates the accused. The "Science wars" for one. I guess it is time for shitty remakes again there too.
Seriously, there is the same pattern of vague claims to benefits, one-sided elective requirements while poisoning the well to call anyone who disagrees with them close-minded and evil. Sadly/fortunately interdisciplinary never explicitly teaches this sort of bullshitting. Sadly because it could be useful in these fights, fortunately because we are all better off with a minimium of this crap wasting our lives.
Ha, I was going to make this exact argument. The flip side of this is that it cost Zuck almost nothing to get Facebook up and running with users using it. To build any type of nuclear weapon I assume that would cost millions to billions, thereby making the barrier to entry rather high.
That is not an endorsement of the authors proposal however. I would like to see it go the other way: treat it more like an engineering discipline and as part of that students would be required to attend the engineer ethics course that (almost) all engineering curriculums have.
But even admittedly that's not seeing the forest for the trees. The questionable systems that are built that are the result of many people working willingly together across a variety of disciplines (to the author's suggestion even). I'm not so sure making computing more multi-disciplinary is the right answer because in fact and in practice it's already that way.
By the same argument, chemical engineering belongs with biology, because the chemicals produced (and their byproducts) impact biological systems. Which is true, but it still doesn't mean that the two disciplines should be lumped together.
Computing may need more exposure to social sciences, but it absolutely does not belong within the social sciences. (More accurately, product management or program management needs more exposure to the social sciences - those who decide what programs are going to do and how they're going to interact with people and society. Computing in general - algorithms, programming techniques, and so on - doesn't even need that.)
I find some of what makes it into CACM is just absolute dreck. To be honest I think they are having trouble finding authors for articles. I can't tell you how many times I've seen articles from Kate Matsudaira prattling on about managing a software team (which, based on conversations with my wife, who is an actual director of software development for a large team, seem to convey naive entry-level management insights at best) or endless articles from Ivar Jacobson trying to evangelize the Next Big Thing to Replace Agile for software engineering.
At the same time there are usually 2-4 articles per issue that are very good. CACM also presents curated lists of interesting research articles, so (as practitioners) we do not need to sift through every article from every conference proceeding or journal publication talking about how some squeezed an extra tiny incremental fraction of x out of an O(n^x) algorithm or incremental papers discussing how compiler type inference algorithms could be improved this tiny little bit with this one weird trick.
And we occasionally get really insightful practitioner articles as well; for example, some interesting bits of how Google manages their code base, or what an incredibly difficult problems Coverity faces when statically-analyzing (supposedly)-compliant C/C++ code.
I think that's not in opposition to what the article says. The main point is that computer science largely dismisses social sciences, hitting realizations and creating problems which social scientists have long considered and solved. To fix this, more exchange of knowledge must happen between computer science and social sciences. In order for social sciences to embrace computing, computing must realize that social science is a necessary part of their work.
Don't you think that, even from a strictly scientific perspective, more exchange of knowledge between computer science and social sciences would be good? Isn't it a shame that, for example, social media platforms don't benefit from the decades of research in social science to create a platform that's more beneficial for society? They hit roadblocks and cause problems which could have been easily prevented with this knowledge.
I think it's similar to the relationship between computer science and statistics - both can live without the other, but both have a huge benefit of connecting their knowledge, working together, and even merging their curricula (into data science).
If you haven't read the whole article, I really recommend doing so - I was put off by the title as well, but it's an interesting analysis and makes some good recommendations.
sharpneli|5 years ago
The claim that computing is a social science because it has big effect on society is simply bollocks (This was explicitly claimed in the article, heck it had a subtitle "Why Computing Is a Social Science").
The effects of computing to society definitely is social science. But social sciences have exactly zero to offer on how to, as an example, define an upper bound for certain algorithm.
Just as physics has massive impact on the world the actual act of doing physics had nothing to do with social sciences. How on earth does social sciences help me to solve some particularily nasty partial differential equation? How the results are used are yet again part of social sciences as that talks about what happens to society, but the actual physics is completely out of it.
And as I said at the start, the track record of Social Sciences is not too good. I'm quite doubtful they can even say anything valid on the actual matters that fall under it.
daveFNbuck|5 years ago
LargoLasskhyfv|5 years ago
I really don't get your point.
tzs|5 years ago
At MIT, every undergraduate is required to eight courses in arts, humanities, or social sciences. That works out to taking one arts, humanities, or social science class per semester. Specifically, you have to take one from art, one from humanities, and one from social science. You also have to pick a particular field and take a series of courses in that field.
Caltech is similar, but not quite as structure. Every undergraduate must take 36 units of humanities (Caltech has a different unit scale than most others--one term of most classes earns you 9 units, and there are 3 terms per academic year) , 36 units of social science, and 36 units of humanities or social sciences.
For someone who took the minimum number of units possible to get a CS degree at Caltech, 22% of their coursework would be in humanities or social sciences. 20% for someone who took the average CS course load.
I'd just assumed that it was like that at most other schools too.
dgb23|5 years ago
Especially the "Web development" example in section 2 seems to be quite off. In fact the counterargument for section 2 seems to be very convincing!
CS/IT is such a broad, rapidly progressing field that you cannot be prepared enough on technical subjects.
As someone who has no formal CS education I'm impacted immensely by this. I don't only need to keep up with current technology (mostly in my free time) but also often had to catch up on topics that my peers learned in University.
I'm not complaining though. I love it. But to say that there is _easily_ enough room for additional, non-technical/mathematical subjects seems to be quite unrealistic! Especially if we look at the hiring practices of our industry. Apparently having a degree is not nearly enough even from a technical standpoint.
grardb|5 years ago
As part of my major, I was required to take: two calculus courses, two physics (or chemistry–but almost nobody did) courses, linear algebra, and two discrete math courses. I can confidently say that aside from some very basic physics from the first of the two classes, I have used absolutely none of the knowledge in any of those courses in my life, and if we are just talking about my career (mostly working on Etsy and Trello), then I haven't even used the physics. The rest, I have effectively forgotten completely.
Some of my CS electives also proved not to be that useful for much; for example, my courses on computer graphics, compilers, and operating systems. I retain some basic knowledge from those courses which sometimes come in handy for quickly understanding tangentially-related concepts, but definitely nothing to spend entire semesters on.
Of course, I'm not arguing that nobody who studies computer science should learn the things I've listed, but it seems silly to me to make them required. I took both my calculus and physics courses during my first year of college, and by my third year, I had probably forgotten almost 100% of it. In terms of my career trajectory, and even in terms of the value of knowledge/education for the sake of being knowledgable/educated, it was a complete waste of my time and money.
Often times, I wish I was able to learn a wider variety of things in college.
I think the bigger issue here is that computer science is so tightly coupled with software engineering. I hope that as time goes on, we get better at separating the disciplines in the same way that we've separated other sciences from engineering (e.g. chemistry vs chemical engineering, physics vs mechanical/civil engineering, etc.).
jonnypotty|5 years ago
Allying it with the bit of universities that have abandoned any idea of the value of ideas being linked to actual evidence though is a terrible idea.
Make it part of the engineering department, those guys get the meeting place between a technical discipline and something that has to actually exist in the real world.
Animats|5 years ago
Classic hardcore CS, where people make distributed databases, new algorithms, and robot control systems, worry about proof of correctness, and study automata theory, is part of mathematics.
Machine learning is a branch of statistics.
Nasrudith|5 years ago
Seriously, there is the same pattern of vague claims to benefits, one-sided elective requirements while poisoning the well to call anyone who disagrees with them close-minded and evil. Sadly/fortunately interdisciplinary never explicitly teaches this sort of bullshitting. Sadly because it could be useful in these fights, fortunately because we are all better off with a minimium of this crap wasting our lives.
booleandilemma|5 years ago
brodouevencode|5 years ago
That is not an endorsement of the authors proposal however. I would like to see it go the other way: treat it more like an engineering discipline and as part of that students would be required to attend the engineer ethics course that (almost) all engineering curriculums have.
But even admittedly that's not seeing the forest for the trees. The questionable systems that are built that are the result of many people working willingly together across a variety of disciplines (to the author's suggestion even). I'm not so sure making computing more multi-disciplinary is the right answer because in fact and in practice it's already that way.
AnimalMuppet|5 years ago
Computing may need more exposure to social sciences, but it absolutely does not belong within the social sciences. (More accurately, product management or program management needs more exposure to the social sciences - those who decide what programs are going to do and how they're going to interact with people and society. Computing in general - algorithms, programming techniques, and so on - doesn't even need that.)
yarrel|5 years ago
This obsession with teaching (tech) workers ethics is a bourgeois pastoral fantasy.
Someone needs to read some Foucault.
kbit|5 years ago
Shouldn't engineers who design social media algorithms have some basic knowledge of social dynamics and psychology?
verdverm|5 years ago
If it were how the social sciences need to embrace computing, that would be a legitimate claim from my experience at University.
WkndTriathlete|5 years ago
At the same time there are usually 2-4 articles per issue that are very good. CACM also presents curated lists of interesting research articles, so (as practitioners) we do not need to sift through every article from every conference proceeding or journal publication talking about how some squeezed an extra tiny incremental fraction of x out of an O(n^x) algorithm or incremental papers discussing how compiler type inference algorithms could be improved this tiny little bit with this one weird trick.
And we occasionally get really insightful practitioner articles as well; for example, some interesting bits of how Google manages their code base, or what an incredibly difficult problems Coverity faces when statically-analyzing (supposedly)-compliant C/C++ code.
travisoneill1|5 years ago
kbit|5 years ago
brodouevencode|5 years ago
growlist|5 years ago
[deleted]
kbit|5 years ago
I think it's similar to the relationship between computer science and statistics - both can live without the other, but both have a huge benefit of connecting their knowledge, working together, and even merging their curricula (into data science).
If you haven't read the whole article, I really recommend doing so - I was put off by the title as well, but it's an interesting analysis and makes some good recommendations.
TigeriusKirk|5 years ago
It's more about recognizing that computing now controls a great deal of power and wanting a large slice of that power.
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]