Category: Magazine Articles

The UN Environment Program has called the prevalence and use of lead “one of the biggest environmental catastrophes in human history.”

Mindell believes that we are on the cusp of an industrial change that will shape not only commerce and industry but also human subjectivity and behavior.

Human Activity Recognition (HAR) enables applications that enhance daily living and foster smooth technology integration into personal routines. The pervasive use of HAR also introduces ethical dilemmas that must be carefully navigated.

The highly dubious practice of “Fake It Till You Make It” resurfaced recently, as it has periodically throughout high-tech’s history, when it was exposed in scandals involving the diagnostics technology company Theranos and the cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

Rather than reflexively accepting the need to cut budgets, services, and investment, let us take the time to critically examine the logic of austerity.

For over five decades, the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology (SSIT) has been the professional home for people concerned with how technology impacts the world, and how the application of technology can improve the world.

If we outsource decision-making to AI and spend all our time chatting with chatbots rather than with fellow humans, we are unlikely to develop the civic skills that we need for coordinated collective action.

The author examines the premise that individuals and teams of individuals matter decisively to technological change, and that biographies matter in a way that the prevailing social shaping paradigm either ignores, misunderstands, trivializes, or caricatures.

Digital enterprises have become increasingly monopolistic, individualistic beyond narcissistic to the point of lamentably solipsistic, devastatingly careless of human potential, and environmentally wasteful.

One of the biggest challenges of teaching such a course is the remarkable pace of change in technology and the societal response. The curriculum is in near constant evolution and must explicitly address how students should develop their continuous learning skills.

More than anything, building the future we want requires the courage and hope to imagine something radically different from the world we live in now.

“The apparent indifference of rank-and-file musicians to the invention of the fortepiano may well be because it was principally identified as an invention [novelty] of rather than importance. To all but those most closely associated with its actual construction, the fortepiano was in the first instance an invention for its own sake. There was no practical mandate for it use.”

While the Middle Ages is an important point of reference for virtually all aspects of modern “civilization,” the culture of computing stands out for how enthusiastically it has embraced its memories of medieval European culture.

We examine social media’s profound influence, delving into its effects on self-esteem, media consumption habits, and exposure to targeted marketing.

The IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society has appointed Prof. George Roussos and Assistant Professor Jordan Richard Schoenherr as the Editor-in-Chief (EIC) and the Co-EIC, respectively, beginning in January 2026.

The choices for development, roads, trains, and transport are just as essential to the social impacts of technology as the technologies themselves.

CUCCR approaches solid waste by harnessing data collection to understand the waste flows within the university, using a tucked-away basement space to give waste materials a chance to pause and potentially be repurposed before being landfilled or recycled.

SSIT is participating in the IEEE Digital Privacy Initiative, a program under IEEE Future Directions that “focuses on a user-centric perspective—looking at the digital privacy needs of the individuals rather than the security of data, products, and organizations—such as providing individuals with user-enabled privacy controls and promoting privacy at the outset of product and service lifecycles.”

Now that generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools that produce data and information are becoming widespread and commonplace, studies are showing that humans have an insatiable appetite for data.  These appetites can result in unhealthy data-snacking behaviors and addictions.

Research has shown that cognitive training done on computers results in modest learning gains with the potential to minimize cognitive decline in older adults. Indifferent attitudes toward the chatbot on the part of participants suggest that developers need to adopt a different approach in designing a more interactive and human-like experience, as older adults may have unique preferences and requirements compared to more tech-savvy users.