The Primacy of the Public

Reviewed by Ian Werkheiser, Associate Professor, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley on 4/12/24

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

The book is very comprehensive as a textbook for a course for engineering students and does an excellent job covering the issues they are likely to come into contact with as professionals and in certification exams. A caveat for instructors however: when I teach classes similar to this there are often a significant minority of students who are not planning to be engineers but are interested in philosophy and in technology. This textbook does not have many resources for them to think about the ethical responsibilities they have as users co-constituting what technology actually is (e.g. more material on Ihde's concept of the Designer Fallacy) and their particular vulnerabilities, so depending on who is in the course that might need to be supplemented by the instructor.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The text is accurate throughout with numerous citations to unbiased, widely regarded sources that readers can follow if they have questions.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

The content is up to date in that it engages with emerging issues in nascent technology. Moving forward these sections may need to be

Clarity rating: 5

The text is very clearly written, and introduces novel terms or jargon in bold, making it easier to find later, calling it out as a term for examination, and relieving student worries that it might be a term they should already understand.

Consistency rating: 5

Because the terms build on each other, there is a consistency to the chapters which makes it easy to follow.

Modularity rating: 5

Though the book is cohesive, individual chapters could easily be taken as a module and added to a preexisting course.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The layout of the book gives students tools to move on to the next section, which is quite helpful.

Interface rating: 5

The interface is straightforward and easy to read through or jump to relevant chapters. It does not utilize all the flashy possibilities of embedded content available to OER books, but this can be an advantage as it makes the book run on mobile devices and worse computers, easily readable by text-to-speech programs, or even be printed without loss (these are important accessibility issues for many students).

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

There were no problems with the writing, either in terms of errors or overcomplexity.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

The book was not culturally insensitive or offensive. It might have been nice for more discussion of the interactions of technology with different cultures and the effects it can have on traditional practices, as well the ways in which technology's embedded values (which were discussed) can reinforce certain cultural assumptions to the exclusion of already marginalized voices. This would, however, be an easy discussion topic in class based on that chapter, perhaps with some supplementary readings or examples provided by the instructor.

Comments

Many versions of this course require extended case study analysis by students. In the US this is often to make the course compatible with ABET requirements. A few examples of extended case studies or a section talking about their importance for ethical review by professional organizations and how to do them would have been helpful, so again this is something that might need to be supplemented by the instructor depending on the details of the requirements for their individual class. That said, this is an excellent discussion of engineering ethics and well worth considering by instructors for use in related courses, or for exploration by students in a similar class or with interest in those issues. In particular, engineering students whose program does not provide them with enough ethical resources could work through this book on their own and benefit.