The curricular standards for a bachelor’s degree in computer science (and related programs) requires instruction on the ethics and professional conduct of practitioners. Often there is a separate course that students are required to take. It is a challenging course to teach because there are many topics that may fall within its scope. The topics are based on the sciences and technologies taught in the curriculum, but they go beyond these aspects to include the “softer” areas of ethical philosophy, law, and politics, in which the scientific and technological areas are intertwined. This textbook, now in its seventh edition, addresses these matters and provides significant help in elucidating these nontechnical factors.

There are 19 chapters, plus three appendices, in its 400-plus pages. The book appears to be divided into two logical parts. The first part contains the more general principles and topics. Topics covered in the first ten chapters include the history of computing, morality and law, ethics and ethical analysis, professional ethics and codes of ethics (for example, ACM Code), anonymity, security, privacy, intellectual property, sociological context, risks and liabilities, computer crime, cyberbullying, and cyberharassment. The second part has the remaining nine chapters and is organized based on technologies or type of usage, which are specifically addressed. These chapters include virtualization and virtual reality, cyberspace, metaverse, artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), social networks, mobile systems, computer crime and computer forensics, and biometric technologies. The three appendices include the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the False Claims Act (FCA), and a set of suggested projects to assign.

You can tell the difference between the two parts in style, content, and cohesion. The first part is probably the older part and shows polish in its presentation. The second part on individual technologies seems to show haste in included material, some redundancy in discussion, and a failure to remove dated material. For example, in this 2023 edition, Android 4.0 is not the current version (it was released 12 years ago), MySpace is only a shadow of its former self, and BlackBerry phones went defunct in 2016. Details like these detract from the book and distract the reader. I would also recommend avoiding wading too deeply into the details of technological matters such as blockchain technology, IoT, fingerprint analysis, or types of network configurations. It is possible to create a presentation that frustrates the reader in that he or she would want more detail and examples to better understand how the technology acts. If the details of the technology are not crucial to the ethical, legal, and sociological aspects of the topic, it is better to work at a more abstract level and leave the details for study elsewhere.

Choosing a textbook for a course on ethics, law, and professional tasks is challenging because the choices are few and have different emphases. Kizza’s book has a technological flavor as evidenced by the emphasis placed on the underlying hardware and software systems. A widely used alternative text is The gift of fire: social, legal, and ethical issues for computing technology by Baase and Henry [1]. Now in its fifth edition, it has a more sociological and psychological approach, including many options for exercises, problems, and projects. The new book Ethics and law in computing by Geldon and Maddox [2] spotlights the legal context in which computing professionals labor.

Despite the criticisms, Kizza’s book is still a useful textbook for a course that is hard to teach. It is encyclopedic in scope. Not every chapter needs to be covered to have a solid course that raises student awareness of the responsibilities and challenges of working in the computing professions.