Book Review: Social Engineering: How Crowdmasters, Phreaks, Hackers, and Trolls Created a New Form of Manipulative Communication

By on April 15th, 2023 in Articles, Book Reviews, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

Social media companies have intentionally created platforms that actively spread disinformation. What can we do to protect our society against disinformation? A good place to start would be limiting how large and powerful these social media platforms can get.

TTS Vol 4 Issue 1 Special Issue on Designing Ethical AI Using A Human-Centered Approach: Explainability and Accuracy Toward Trustworthiness

By on April 7th, 2023 in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Social Implications of Technology, Transactions

Access Volume 4, Issue 1, 2023 – Special Issue on Designing Ethical AI Using A Human-Centered Approach: Explainability and Accuracy…  Read More

IEEE HTB / SSIT DL – 28 March 10am ET – Co-designing Ethical Interventions in Resource Constrained Environments

By on March 27th, 2023 in Articles, Ethics, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

The IEEE Humanitarian Technologies Board Ad Hoc Committee on SIGHT Best Practices is cooperating with a number of IEEE OUs…  Read More

Teenager student doing a presentation in the classroom

“It Sets Boundaries Making Your Life Personal and More Comfortable”: Understanding Young People’s Privacy Needs and Concerns

By on March 17th, 2023 in Articles, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Privacy & Security, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

Young people’s unique understandings and perspectives are often not considered in debates and discussions around privacy and security. This article outlines a youth-centric notion of digital privacy and guiding principles around privacy developed by young people from Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Ghana, and Slovenia.

A 13-year-old girl is using her smartphone in the dark room.

Toxic Technology

By on March 16th, 2023 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Communication Technology, Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Health & Medical, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

Technology has always been about more than simply a route to increased productivity and economic growth; technology also provides the opportunity to enhance, enrich, and empower—basically, to improve shared qualitative values or people’s quality of life (however that is measured). On the flip side, technology also provides the opportunity to develop and project organizational control, which itself can be weaponized to quantitatively determine human value as an asset to that organization, or to reinforce asymmetric power relationships.

Data Feminism

By on February 24th, 2023 in Articles, Book Reviews, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

In Data Feminism, authors Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein do not merely deal with data. They pair data with feminism. Here, feminism is deployed as a “shorthand for the diverse and wide-ranging projects that name and challenge sexism and other forces of oppression, as well as those which seek to create more just, equitable, and livable futures.”

Good Pictures: A History of Popular Photography

By on February 21st, 2023 in Articles, Book Reviews, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

Good Pictures is about the advice given to photographers—mostly amateurs—on the techniques they should use to improve their work. Of course, the advice is intimately tied to technological developments in photography as well as the desire of camera makers to sell new products.

Learning From Indigenous Cultures

By on February 10th, 2023 in Articles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Editorial & Opinion, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

We would act wisely if we turn to alternative ways of thinking, other wisdom traditions, and learn from them. Ubuntu philosophy can help to draw attention to social issues, for example, the horrors of colonialism, exclusion, and oppression, and to find ways to promote social justice. Aboriginal wisdom can help to apply diverse ways of knowing, for example, knowledge that is related to place, to kinship, to stories, to patterns—not only knowledge in books. The Indigenous cultures and wisdom of the Americas can teach us how to organize economic and political systems more sustainably and to develop more caring relationships with nature. And Confucian culture and wisdom can help to design and apply technologies in ways that support us as relational and developmental beings.