Category: Commentary

The Montreal Statement on Sustainability in the Digital Age

By on June 25th, 2020 in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Commentary, Environment, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

Two major forces are shaping the future of human civilization: anthropogenic climate change and the digital revolution. The changing climate is driving systemic shifts that threaten to destabilize the health and wellbeing of humankind and the natural systems on which they depend.

Tuning Networks for Prosocial Behavior

By on January 17th, 2020 in Commentary, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

Social media have been seen to accelerate the spread of negative content such as disinformation and hate speech, often unleashing a reckless herd mentality within networks, further aggravated by malicious entities using bots for amplification. So far, the response to this emerging global crisis has centered around social media platform companies making reactive moves

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.

Efficiency Versus Creativity as Organizing Principles of Socio-Technical Systems

By on April 10th, 2019 in Commentary, Ethics, Human Impacts, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

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?

Information Technology in a City Enterprise

By on January 19th, 2018 in Commentary, Ethics, Magazine Articles, Social Implications of Technology, Societal Impact

We must challenge ourselves to transcend our familiar notion of the IT artifact as just an inanimate tool standing by for our use like some sort of mechanical device, neatly separable and distinct from us. It is far more productive to view Information Technology as practice.
Citizen trust and confidence in the public institution and notions of the public good are, in many ways, the bottom line for the public sector.

The Unstoppable Changing of the Electricity Guard

By on December 20th, 2017 in Commentary, Environment, Magazine Articles, Societal Impact

Twenty-five years ago we didn’t know that solar energy, including modular photovoltaic (PV) plants ranging in size from 1 kW to hundreds of megawatts, along with increasingly larger, electronically-aided wind generators (up to 8-MW offshore units), would become in just 25 years the cornerstones of a revolution in power production that is drastically changing the face and fate of power systems.