What sense of worth and dignity can a person have when their daily activities are confined within systemic contraptions where personal input, originality, and initiative are either undesirable, or quantified as targets to be maximized?

U.K. democracy is out of date. It isn’t built to deal with digital tools that have unprecedented potential to manipulate the public.

Gerald (Jerry) Engel, a past President of IEEE-SSIT, has died.

Andrew Maynard and Heather Ross chat with Gillian Hadfield at the 2018 Governance of Emerging Technologies and Science conference. Gillian…  Read More

The word “regulation” has been demonized by those who back an unfettered world of sink-or-swim markets. Yet the need for order – not to mention the defense of the defenseless – is essential to a free and functioning society.

Innovative Information and Communication Technologies play an important role in e-governance and digital democracy. There is unprecedented opportunity for community collective choice, whereby citizens who are affected by a set of governing rules can help to select policy options and rank spending priorities.

As new SSIT President, I congratulate the three people who were elected to the Member-at-Large positions on the SSIT Board of Governors for three-year terms beginning in 2019.

Politics required dialogue, deliberation, negotiation, and compromise. But now there is a dispute over the facts themselves.

Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925) is now considered a maverick of electrical science, but he could also be considered the founder of that subject.

Call for Papers – Special Issue of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine – Human Computer Interaction: Regulation and Ethics of Digital Technology

Becoming Like a Child for Technological Advancement. Wound Man affords us a vivid reminder of our physical finitude; we are mortal creatures who are susceptible to wounds, injuries, and contagions. And yet, #WoundPerson challenges us to better attune ourselves to our non-physical vulnerabilities and weaknesses.

Will AI be our biggest ever advance — or the biggest threat? The real danger of AI lies not in sudden apocalypse, but in the gradual degradation and disappearance of what make human experience and existence meaningful.

Katina Michael – We are Becoming Enslaved by our Technology from the Intelligence Squared (IQ2) debate at the City Recital Hall, Sydney, Australia. (2014) Assembled with pictures plundered from the 14 corners of the Internet.

Given the current lack of regulation, there is nothing in principle to stop unscrupulous organizations from deploying surreptitious robotic olfaction.

As VR has hit the mainstream, much debate has arisen over its ethical complexities. Traditional moral responsibilities do not always translate to the digital world. One aspect we argue is essential to ethical responsibility for virtual reality is that VR solutions must integrate ethical analysis into the design process, and practice dissemination of best practices.

SSIT launches a new publication: IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society

In a September 2018 vote, the IEEE-SSIT Board of Governors elected Bob Dent as President-Elect of the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology (SSIT). He will assume the office of SSIT President on January 1, 2019, for a two-year term ending December 31, 2020.

Many recent advances in implantable devices not so long ago would have been strictly in the domain of science fiction. At the same time, the public remains mystified, if not conflicted about implantable technologies. Rising awareness about social issues related to implantable devices requires further exploration.

The assumption has been that consumers will jump at hype. Yet here at the end of 2018, it can be argued that the venality of tech giants has deflated the very hype cycle upon which those companies depend.

It’s interesting that the first major science fiction novel was written by a woman and perhaps significant that it presents a dark vision of scientific experimentation.