Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
It will be assumed in this chapter that the actual political system in Poland during
this period can be characterised as WPR (who has got power is right), leading to
very arbitrary decisions and acts. This system was introduced into Poland together
with the Red Army from the Soviet Union at the end of World War II. It was based
on the misrepresentation that the system operated for the benefit of the people,
whereas in practice, it operated for the benefit of power structures and elites. Before
the war, Poland was a democratic country (by the standards of the time). The WPR
system was introduced into the political and economic systems. As a result, impor-
tant decisions were taken in the interests of power structures rather than the people.
The situation was similar at lower levels of the hierarchy, for instance, in industry
and agriculture. The WPR system acted everywhere for the benefit of the power
structure and associated elites, and its actions were considered to be correct, regard-
less of how they would be considered from a more objective perspective.
The WPR system made use of the so-called power of people (PoP) teams to sup-
port it in ruling the country. A PoP team is a fuzzily defined set of people, in charge
of a particular area or domain of activity. The concept was introduced by the WPR
system to give the impression that it was the people who ruled the country. However,
in reality, almost all power was held by PoPs, who were empowered to make all
political, technical and economic decisions. The members of PoPs rarely had any
official status. Instead they generally had unofficial authority for specific technical
or social projects.
It is also important to recognise that not all PoPs were communists. Non-
communists, including both Catholics and atheists, were granted power for specific
projects or over particular enterprises or administration districts. PoPs were defined
fuzzily in accordance with the standard practice of the WPR system. This involved
all organisational structures having a degree of ambiguity to enable the WPR sys-
tem to intervene and make decisions when it was interested in a particular case. This
also allowed the system to easily replace any PoPs who violated the system rules.
The chapter discusses the ethical issues in the domain of ICT and automation.
These issues have been considered by the SWIIS (Supplemental Ways for Improving
International Stability), now TECIS 9.5, theoreticians and practitioners for a long
time (e.g. Argadona
2003
; Bulz 2010, personal communication; Bulz et al.
2009
;
Bynum
2000
; Dimirovski
2001
; Hersh
2001a
,
b
; Hersh et al.
2005
; Jancev and
Cernetic
2001
; Magebheim and Schulte
2006
; Nordkvelle and Olson
2005
; Stahk
2009
; Tavani
2001
). The problems of ethics in ICT and automation in Poland have
been discussed by Lewoc et al
.
(2005,
2006a
,
b
,
2008a
,
2009
,
2010a
,
2011a
,
b
,
c
),
Izworski et al. (
2001
) and Han et al. (
2008
). This involved the investigation of ethi-
cal issues through consideration of the experiences of actual Polish pioneers in ICT
and automation.
It should be noted that the overwhelming majority of ICT and automation proj-
ects in Poland in the communist period were intended to solve emerging problems
there. Generally, ICT design teams consisting of specialists in various areas relevant
to ICT and automation worked on these problems. The team members needed to be
able to work together and develop an appropriate solution, which was often multi-
disciplinary. The leading designer generally had a very important role in projects
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