Computer ethics the 1940s with MIT professor Norbert Wiener, the American mathematician and philosopher. While working on anti-aircraft artillery during World War II, Wiener and his fellow engineers developed a system of communication between the part of a cannon that tracked a warplane, the part that performed calculations to estimate a trajectory, and the part responsible for firing. Wiener termed the science of such information feedback systems "cybernetics," and he discussed this new field with its related ethical concerns in his 1948 book, "Cybernetics". In 1950, Wiener's second book, "The Human Use of Human Beings", delved deeper into the ethical issues surrounding
Critical understanding context is not meant in a negative sense; rather it outlines a process of thinking. Critical understanding is used to define the process of formulating and understanding a complex problem or difficult set of ideas. In a general sense, it is, ‘a consequence of men’s [sic] beginning to reflect about their own capacity for reflection, about the world, about their position in the world.’ The notion of critical understanding is closely related to the concept of Critical Thinking, described as, ‘reasonable reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do.’ Critical thinking has also been described as, ‘thinking about