Category: Social Implications of Technology

In this issue: New Student Branch, Volunteer Opportunities and Introductions, Ethical Dilemma Publication Opportunity, CFPs, Conferences, IEEE Foundation Grant for…  Read More

A recent anthology of “climate fiction,” Loosed Upon the World, projects climate change forward some years into dystopian scenarios. The editor,…  Read More

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine and IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine are pleased to announce a Joint Special Issue for March 2018. Due…  Read More

In this issue: Call for volunteers to support and promote SSIT’s Five Pillars, SSIT volunteer introductions, joint special issue Call…  Read More

VIZIO is reportedly paying fines for using TVs to track user’s viewing patterns in significant detail as well as associating…  Read More

In this issue: SSIT Board of Governors election results, awards and publications notices, and conference reminders. Happy New Year! 2016…  Read More

London haptic researchers have developed a device to add to a cell phone that will allow remote persons kiss, as…  Read More

It should be noted that an early, if not first, instance of an online physical attack on a person has…  Read More

“Alexa, tell me, in your own words, what happened on the night in question.” Actually the request is more like,…  Read More

Guest Blog entry by Cassie Phillips With the recent, record-breaking distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks carried out with hijacked Internet-of-Things…  Read More

The powers of big data, AI/analytics, and subtle data collection are now converging to a future only hinted at in Orwell’s 1984.

With Siri and Alexa, you are being asked to “bug your house” with a device that listens to every noise in the house.

by Marc Canellas and Rachel Haga Autonomous weapons systems (AWS) are already here. Although some of the colloquial names for…  Read More

The ability to kill a target from a “position of safety” is essentially the basic design criteria for many weapon systems.

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, the flagship publication of the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology, has won a…  Read More

Should children have toys that can combine speech recognition with a Wi-Fi connection to capture and respond to them, and that potentially are able to record their conversations as well as feed them “messages”?  Welcome to the world of Hello Barbie.

The insurance company’s privacy policy does not allow them to collect the data that their web page claims this device will collect — so clearly privacy is an afterthought.