At the University of Victoria, like almost all universities, the engineering program requires that students take a course on the social implication of technology. This requirement seems to be more motivated by the engineering professional association than by the faculty at the universities[4]. All design involves two very different aspects, a technical aspect and a social aspect. Most university faculty in engineering, and computing focus their research efforts on the technical side.
While there is nothing wrong with a focus on the technical side, the use and possible misuse of a technology, the social side, must also be considered. As an example, in 1995, a police officer in British Columbia used his authority to access the Motor Vehicles Branch database to determine the names and addresses of women who attended the Every Women's Health Clinic in Vancouver[5]. The officer assumed, since abortions were performed at the clinic, that all of the women attending the clinic were either having or performing abortions and he had a letter sent to them that condemned their alleged actions. Technically, the system worked according to specifications, but it did not protect these women from the invasion of their privacy.
It is the anticipation of possible problems that I believe makes the study of the social implications of technology so important. With the move of computing more towards being a profession, and with the liability issues that will go along with that move, it is important that the professional computer scientist be able to see problems and solve them before they happen. The goal of including social implications in the computer science or engineering curriculum is, therefore, to make sure that the system design accounts for possible problems before they arise, and allows the designer to modify their design to ensure a smoother integration of their design into society as a whole.