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Do you think that engineering a house is more "engineering" than engineering a social network for 2 billion people?

JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
Yes I do. If more people got training or specifically we had some building codes or ethics training about how to make a social network that isn’t harmful to those millions that participate in it, we might not be in the state we are in right now.
pjmorris 8y ago
"If a builder has built a house for a man, and has not made his work sound, and the house he built has fallen, and caused the death of its owner, that builder shall be put to death." - from Hammurabi's code [0][1], circa 1754 BC. Liability in the case of house-building has been established for millennia. Liability in the case of social networks is somewhat less well-established. I'd argue that being able to deal with the consequences of the results (e.g. the social consequences of ads and posts in the 2016 election, or leaking private conversations, or hitting pedestrians from today's HN front page) is a key part of maturing an engineering field. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi [1] http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  The professionalism of the trade itself has little to do with the nature of the work itself. Software development and network management are engineering work, but the trades have yet to develop engineering guilds as with mechanical, civil, aeronautical, electrical, chemical, etc., engineering. The present situation with data breeches, social impacts, systems vulnerabilities (think IoT) may change this. The fluidityy of tthe field makes this challenging. Engineering certification itself isn't some eternal concept. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=certified%20engineer&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ccertified%20engineer%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=certified%20en...
- mindslight 8y ago
  The customers of contemporary social networks are the advertisers themselves. The "users" are more analogous to those on the business ends of weapons.
- owebmaster 8y ago
  > I'd argue that being able to deal with the consequences of the results (e.g. the social consequences of ads and posts in the 2016 election, or leaking private conversations, or hitting pedestrians from today's HN front page) The same way you can argue that the constructions and architeture also have social consequences both positive and negative but the engineers and architects are responsible only for the physical structure.

Yes I do. If more people got training or specifically we had some building codes or ethics training about how to make a social network that isn’t harmful to those millions that participate in it, we might not be in the state we are in right now.

pjmorris 8y ago

"If a builder has built a house for a man, and has not made his work sound, and the house he built has fallen, and caused the death of its owner, that builder shall be put to death." - from Hammurabi's code [0][1], circa 1754 BC. Liability in the case of house-building has been established for millennia. Liability in the case of social networks is somewhat less well-established. I'd argue that being able to deal with the consequences of the results (e.g. the social consequences of ads and posts in the 2016 election, or leaking private conversations, or hitting pedestrians from today's HN front page) is a key part of maturing an engineering field. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi [1] http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp

dredmorbius 8y ago
The professionalism of the trade itself has little to do with the nature of the work itself. Software development and network management are engineering work, but the trades have yet to develop engineering guilds as with mechanical, civil, aeronautical, electrical, chemical, etc., engineering. The present situation with data breeches, social impacts, systems vulnerabilities (think IoT) may change this. The fluidityy of tthe field makes this challenging. Engineering certification itself isn't some eternal concept. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=certified%20engineer&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ccertified%20engineer%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=certified%20en...
mindslight 8y ago
The customers of contemporary social networks are the advertisers themselves. The "users" are more analogous to those on the business ends of weapons.
owebmaster 8y ago
> I'd argue that being able to deal with the consequences of the results (e.g. the social consequences of ads and posts in the 2016 election, or leaking private conversations, or hitting pedestrians from today's HN front page) The same way you can argue that the constructions and architeture also have social consequences both positive and negative but the engineers and architects are responsible only for the physical structure.