Being Human in the Days/Daze of Big Data

By on November 28th, 2019 in Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

Technology for Big Data, and its brother-in-arms Machine Learning, is at the root of, and is the facilitator of, deliberate string-pulling design choices. These design choices are made by people, and so the question actually becomes, do the design choices enabled by Big Data and Machine Learning have the capacity to alter, diminish and perhaps actually “destroy” what it means to be fundamentally human.

Bipartite Approaches: Designing and Delivering Technologies for Body and Soul

By on November 19th, 2019 in Human Impacts, Last Word, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

Our authors identified risks that can result in diminished humanity, if technology is designed or delivered irresponsibly. Our community addressed much of what it means to be human, in the context of complex and converging processes.

Coming Up This Week – IEEE ISTAS 2019 – Boston

By on November 9th, 2019 in Conferences, Human Impacts, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

The IEEE Society for Social Implications of Technology (SSIT) invites you to participate in its flagship event, the 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society.  IEEE ISTAS 2019 takes place 15- 16 November in Boston MA, hosted by the School of Engineering of Tufts University, on its Medford Campus.

If Technology Is a Parasite Masquerading as a Symbiont — Are We the Host?

By on October 29th, 2019 in Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

Parents have no idea that lurking behind their kids’ screens and phones are a multitude of psychologists, neuroscientists, and social science experts, who use their knowledge of psychological vulnerabilities to devise products that capture kids’ attention for the sake of industry profit.

Secrets and Lies

By on October 17th, 2019 in Book Reviews, Case Studies, Ethics, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

Holmes’s idea of inventing a cheap, small, fast, reliable blood-testing system to creatively destroy most of the world’s existing infrastructure for blood tests ran into big problems early on. But with her chutzpah, persuasiveness, and eventually with the help of outright obfuscations and lies, Holmes kept Theranos going until a Wall Street Journal investigative reporter named John Carreyrou responded to a lead by a health-care blogger that something fishy was going on.

Health 4.0: Challenges for an Orderly and Inclusive Innovation

By on September 24th, 2019 in Commentary, Health & Medical, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology

Healthcare is one of the sectors with the highest expectations for positive impacts of the 4.0 revolution. Healthcare systems must deal with the challenge of providing care without raising costs, given the fiscal constraints of the governments that provide such services to the population.

BOOK REVIEW: The Revenge of Analog

By on September 5th, 2019 in Book Reviews, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

“From today, painting is dead!” is said to have been proclaimed by the French painter Paul Delaroche in 1839 after seeing his first daguerreotype. His was an early name on the list of people who have made fools of themselves when prognosticating a future resulting from a new medium or invention. Motivated by either techno-euphoria or pessimism they have become famously wrong.

Expedition map of Northwest Passage Project route and destinations

Science Communication, Digital Media, and the Human Voice

By on August 17th, 2019 in Blog Posts, Communication Technology, Environment, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

Does access to science communication inevitably lead to greater public understanding of science, its discoveries, and their impact? Does access to online data sets inevitably lead to full comprehension of available information by scientists?

old typewriter

Letter to the Editor

By on August 9th, 2019 in Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology

“Nudging” is the term used in the IEEE standards work on Ethics for AI Design. An AI system that applies deep learning to manipulating human decisions, with detailed analysis of the targeted individual, is a disturbing potential that must affect our trust in both the systems and those that direct their applications.

View of Earth from Moon

When America Did Something, Not Because It Was Easy But Because It Was Hard

By on July 19th, 2019 in Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

On that day, at 2:26 p.m., Eastern time, from Cape Kennedy,  Lunar Orbiter 1, the first spacecraft to orbit the Moon, was launched. Four days later, at 8:43 a.m., Eastern time, the spaceship successfully entered an orbit around the Moon, becoming the first human-made object to orbit a heavenly body other than Earth.