What other essential knowledge or skills should we add to this imaginary 'toolbox'?"

Whatever they are (and Heinlein's list is very good), the skills that we need to live as well-rounded humans cannot be perceived, checked off, or checked in like items on a requirements list or lines of code. A great problem with technology, and with most practitioners of it, is the instrumental view of the world it inculcates. As the Dean says, the humanities represent a very different way of thinking and understanding the world.

Probably the best thing that could happen to most technology majors is a several-years-long break from it.

Working for a "defense" contractor, you can be extremely sure you are contributing to evil.

At some point between 9/11/2001 and 6/5/2014, I worked for a defense contractor for several years....I had no idea! Do you honestly think they'd tell someone like me?

You worked for a defense contractor, and then claim plausible deniability that the shit you're contributing to is used for evil?

Seriously?

That's convenient, isn't it? Because in your worldview individuals are exempt from making moral choices - they need just point out some other person or entity which has a lot of influence.

What rationalizing bullshit, as if programmers don't have brains and can't be expected to develop and follow moral consciences. As if they are somehow exempt from the moral duties we all have.

You can feed your family doing other things, which may not give you as much comfort as you want, but which don't have you hurting other people to the same degree.

...but sometimes you just have to shut up and play the game if you want the rewards of the game.

Basically, you chose to shut up and do unethical things, to keep getting your hands on those $$$$ greasy paychecks. So quit rationalizing.

You had and have options.

"Are you going to be an asshole who chooses to accept money for working, directly or indirectly, for the military?"
(This is what the "defense industry" is, kiddies. Very lucrative and widespread.)

"Are you going to be an asshole who chooses to accept money for working, directly or indirectly, for spy agencies?"

Addressing these ethical problems requires personal political and social awareness, something often missing from young people's time allotments.

Slashdot would like to be taken seriously, I assume. But "Condi" isn't our friend; we don't know Rice on a first-name basis, much less on a nickname basis. Serious journalism/reporting/blogging doesn't refer to public figures by their first names.

The same goes for all the Google billionaires and other tech luminaries, whom tech outlets like Slashdot routinely refer to as, e.g., "Sergey" or "Larry".

They are not our friends. We're not all part of some big club together - the concerns of tech CEOs are vastly different from those of most working tech people. Tech blogging doesn't serve the tech community well by employing these kinds of linguistic devices, which help to disarm the critical thinking of readers.

The crypto tools were part of a classified NSA project he was working on at Stanford in the mid 1970s to build a secure, classified Internet. 'At the time I couldn't share that with my friends,' Cerf said."

Another one drops into my asshole category for working for intelligence/military/military contracting. And they probably almost all think they were "serving America".

...that the advertisements that they serve are "wanted".

And thus, technology continues to uglify the world.

...not to trendy-quantify every goddamn piece of food I eat.

Case in point, Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college, and I don't think anybody would say he made a mistake.'"

You would if you don't think that making money should be a prime goal in life.

The assumption that genius requires "achievement" of some kind is smuggled in.

Militarism propaganda violence shit.