IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2023 - 119

sandwich orders he fetched. At that time, SSIT leadership
was going through a transition from a small
group of dedicated volunteers primarily located in
the Northeast U.S. to a more geographically diverse
leadership engaged in a broad range of activities,
including conferences and collaborations with
other IEEE societies. The transition to a larger, more
broadly engaged AdCom (eventually renamed
Board of Governors) with some meetings outside of
New York was frustrating for Unger, who much preferred
discussing social and ethical issues of technology
to planning for conferences, budgeting, and
other minutia of a more broadly engaged technical
society. He nonetheless continued to participate
with and support the new generation of SSIT leaders
well beyond the beginning of the millennium, continuing
to serve as Ethics Committee Chair and filling
other posts when needed including Publications
Chair and Professional Activities Committee for Engineers
(PACE) representative. It is no exaggeration to
say that SSIT, with two journals and a newsletter, a
portfolio of conferences, including the IEEE ETHICS
conference series, 27 chapters worldwide, and
extensive standards activities would not be what it
is today without the foundation laid by Unger and
other early architects of the society.
While Unger was interested in a number of sociotechnical
issues including government-imposed
secrecy regarding scientific and engineering knowledge
[6], his greatest contributions were in the area of
engineering ethics. He was a champion of engineering
Codes of Ethics, having contributed to the drafting
of the original IEEE Code of Ethics in 1974 [7] and the
significant overhaul of the code in 1990 [8]. Although
Unger disagreed with some of the provisions of these
codes [7], today's more expansive IEEE Code, which
includes provisions on ethical design, sustainable
development, privacy, intelligent systems, and diversity
and inclusion [9] would not be the model of engineering
professionalism that it is without these earlier
contributions of Unger and other CSIT members.
The 1974 Code evolved in part from Unger's
chronicling [10] of the classic engineering ethics
case of the three engineers who were fired after
calling attention to safety problems in San Francisco's
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) System's automated
train controls. Other outcomes included the
issuance by the IEEE of an amicus curiae brief in
support of the engineers in a lawsuit they brought
against BART and the establishment of the IEEE
September 2023
Member Conduct Committee [11]. The BART engineers
were the first recipients of CSIT's Award for
Outstanding Service in the Public Interest, subsequently
renamed in honor of the late Carl Barus, a
former chair of the SSIT awards committee (https://
technologyandsociety.org/member-resources/
awards-programs/barus-award-recipients/).
In 1995, Unger was appointed to the new IEEE Ethics
Committee and served as its chair from 1997 to
1998. Along with the previous Chair, the late Jerry Engel
(another distinguished leader of SSIT), Unger helped
establish a number of reforms in IEEE ethics policies
and practices including the establishment of an ethics
hotline. These developments proved to be too much,
too soon for the IEEE Board of Directors and a backlash
occurred resulting in the termination of the hotline and
consolidation of the Ethics Committee with the Member
Conduct Committee [12]. It is only in recent years
that the kind of progress Unger worked so diligently for
20 years earlier materialized in significant changes to
IEEE's ethics policies, procedures, and programs [13].
As important as Unger's work on engineering ethics
was within IEEE, its greatest impact has perhaps
been on teaching and scholarship in the field of engineering
ethics. His book Controlling technology: Ethics
and the responsible engineer [5], first published
in 1982, is both an engineering ethics textbook and a
handbook on doing engineering ethics within a professional
society. The latter is important since most
of the engineering ethics literature only addresses
professional societies to the extent they promulgate
Codes of Ethics. Unger not only detailed the
importance and making of codes, but the struggles
to elevate the codes to more than window dressing.
His work on engineering ethics was also widely published
in journals both within IEEE (including SSIT's
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine) and outside
of IEEE on such topics as engineering ethics education
[14], [19], ethics support [15], [16], [17], bribery
[20], real-world ethics cases [21], and the need
for social responsibility and high ethical standards
in engineering [18], [22]. Unger's work stood out at
a time when few engineers were actively engaged in
the scholarship of engineering ethics.
STeve loved To debate and could be intense and
persistent (he once persuaded one of us to go for a
walk in subzero weather in Alberta, Canada, to discuss
the IEEE ethics arena), but was also compassionate
and collegial. Above all, he was a thoughtful mentor to
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https://technologyandsociety.org/member-resources/awards-programs/barus-award-recipients/ https://technologyandsociety.org/member-resources/awards-programs/barus-award-recipients/ https://technologyandsociety.org/member-resources/awards-programs/barus-award-recipients/
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2023

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