Category: President’s Message

SSIT Pillar 4 is dedicated to Societal Impact of Technology. Pillar 4 focuses on highlighting and supporting the development of technologies that incorporate the principles of safety, security, and privacy by design.

As an IEEE technical Society whose focus on all aspects of societal implications of technology complements the technical activities of all other IEEE Societies, SSIT members have a proud history of contributions to sustainable development and humanitarian technology. We have long focused on addressing ethical implications, interdependencies, context, and socio-cultural norms that are essential to avoid unintended and unanticipated consequences. One of our core strengths as a community has been our collaborative, partnership-based approach.

While societal change often takes place over extended periods of time, at key times in the history of human society, innovation can be accelerated by a combination of necessity and serendipity. We are currently experiencing such an accelerated transition.

Pillar 2 is focused on professional and research ethics, ethics in the development of technologies, ethics in the context of Sustainable Development and Humanitarian Technology, as well as engineering ethics education.

Pillar 1: Sustainable Development and Humanitarian Technology IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology volunteers are making significant progress in…  Read More

This is my last message as SSIT’s president. The past two years have been exciting ones for our Society: we’ve…  Read More

The year 1962 saw the publication of at least three important works related to technology and society. Rachel Carson, a…  Read More

Computers tell us what to do, every day, all the time. Is this a problem? I may get irritated when…  Read More

I recently watched The Martian, a great advertisement for engineering. Back in the real world, I read an October 7,…  Read More

Every day as engineers and technologists we go to work teaching, developing, building, implementing, maintaining technology. Do we care about…  Read More

“Can we program ethics into Artificial Intelligence?” was the topic of a keynote panel initiated by SSIT at the July…  Read More

This past year, 2013, was a busy year for me, and for SSIT. Some of this activity was highly visible….  Read More

Technologists are problem solvers. We work out answers to questions (sometimes simple, sometimes difficult), and apply these to the world….  Read More