Why computing belongs within the social sciences
This article argues [that] the well-publicized social ills of computing will not go away simply by integrating ethics instruction or codes of conduct into computing curricula. The remedy to these ills instead lies less in philosophy and more in fields such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, communications, and political science. That is, because computing as a discipline is becoming progressively more entangled within the human and social lifeworld, computing as an academic discipline must move away from engineering-inspired curricular models and integrate the analytic lenses supplied by social science theories and methodologies. To this end, the article concludes by presenting three realistic recommendations for transforming academic computing in light of this recognition.
Recommendation 1: Embrace other disciplines’ insight.
Recommendation 2: Replace some computing courses with social science ones
Recommendation 3: Embrace multidisciplinarity through faculty hiring.
