Category: Social Implications of Technology

Unless we create real boundaries, enforced by legislation, the social media giants will also walk away from the chaos they have enabled.

Understanding the societal trajectory induced by AI, and anticipating its directions so that we might apply it for achieving equity, is a sociological, ethical, legal, cultural, generational, educational, and political problem.

In 2020, our flagship ISTAS conference and the cosponsored conferences were huge successes, with record attendance, partly because going virtual allowed wider participation.

Abstract Since 2016, drones have been deployed in various development projects in sub-Saharan Africa, where trials, tests, and studies have…  Read More

Crises expose the fragility and resilience of our sociotechnical systems – from healthcare to financial markets, internet connectivity, and local communities. Submissions are especially invited on but not limited to the following topics intersecting with COVID-19 and crises:

Video doorbells and related technologies, along with the data they generate, will continue to be abused, undermining the security of what is being pitched as a security technology.

With the century termed one of digital connect from the use of desktops at work, laptops at homes and handy…  Read More

For better or worse, we have become familiar with the idea that technologies profile people to deliver a service of…  Read More

We can perhaps accept Weil’s starting premise of obligations as fundamental concepts, based on which we can also reasonably accept her assertion that “obligations … all stem, without exception, from the vital needs of the human being.”

The IEEE International Humanitarian Technology Conference (IEEE IHTC) is a Multi-Regional Conference Series rotating between R7 (Canada), R8 (Africa, Europe…  Read More

Hosted by the Government of South Africa through the Department of Science and Innovation and Supported by the European Commission…  Read More

Examining how face recognition software is used to identify and sort citizenship within mechanisms like the Biometric Air Exit (BAE) is immensely important; alongside this, the process of how “citizen” and “noncitizen” is defined, as data points within larger mechanisms like the BAE, need to be made transparent.

Public Interest Technology (PIT) is defined as “technology practitioners who focus on social justice, the common good, and/or the public…  Read More

Damon Krukowski’s Ways of Hearing does for digital sound what Berger’s Ways of Seeing did for the reproduced image. He wants us to question what we hear, as well as what we’re no longer hearing, in the era of digital audio.

SusTech 2021 invites undergraduate and graduate students to submit abstracts for the Student Poster Contest by the extended deadline of…  Read More

Principles taught to STEM students state that “engineers must gain an understanding of all the issues surrounding a particular design challenge. These issues might include the need for the project, relevant social and economic conditions of the target population, and project constraints and requirements.” Engineers and problem-solvers are not the problem. Short-term thinking is the problem. Wishful thinking is the problem. “It will do for now” is the problem.

Albright’s book focuses on a group of Americans who live a life of digital hyper-connectivity. Mostly under age 50, this would include what are called Generation X (born between 1965 and 1979), Millennials (born between 1980 and 1999), and their offspring — some, as we have seen, still infants.

Clint Andrews, Professor of Urban Planning and Development at Rutgers University, is 2021-2022 President of the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology.

Contemporary circumstances in the United States, both in broader politics, recent protest movements around police brutality, and in the demographics of engineering education, have prompted us to look for new ways to bring theory on gender, race, and class to audiences who would not normally consider it their usual reading.

In 2021, Terri Bookman will become SSIT Administrator, and Heather Hilton, IEEE Publications Staff, will be Editorial/Production Associate for T&S Magazine