Category: Societal Impact

I have long pondered the issue of dehumanization through automation. I think the old adage: “no one is irreplaceable” now…  Read More

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

Autonomous weapons systems (AWS) are already here. Although some of the colloquial names for AWS may suggest science fiction (killer…  Read More

In the early 1940s, why would ten American female basketball players in the heat of competition abruptly halt a match…  Read More

Can we trust for-profit corporations to protect our privacy? Are these compatible concepts and institutions? These are difficult questions to…  Read More

The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet. By Benjamin Peters. M.I.T. Press, 2016, 312 pages. Reviewed by Loren Graham.  …  Read More

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

The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance – the idea that anything is possible. — Ray…  Read More

The Paradox of Technological Potential – Part II In November 2015, as editors, we started sorting through submissions for a…  Read More

The robot Bina48 is funny, and melancholy, and at times, uncannily profound. Like a human, she is complicated and contradictory,…  Read More

A rugged male Metro Toronto police officer stares down a female protester outside the Toronto G-20 meetings in 2010. She…  Read More

When Cecilia Abadie — a Google Glass “explorer” testing out the new device — received the first ever traffic ticket…  Read More

Each year, thousands of film buffs gather at the Sundance International Film Festival in Park City, UT, U.S.A., to see…  Read More

By Ahmed S. Khan. CRC Press (Taylor & Francis), 2012. Reviewed by Karl D. Stephan   Anyone who doesn’t know…  Read More

By W. Bernard Carlson, Princeton University Press, 2013, 520 pages. Reviewed by Eric P. Wenaas.   W. Bernard Carlson points…  Read More

Technological innovation over the past century has revolutionized our society’s ability to solve problems. A byproduct of this movement is…  Read More

In many respects, information and communication technologies (ICTs) pose new challenges to society. It is worth recognizing what ICTs represent…  Read More

This article is a summary report on the Eighth Workshop on the Social Implications of National Security Series. This year’s…  Read More

A set of technologies, loosely referred to as “artificial agents,” is becoming more pervasive and more powerful in the current…  Read More

The advent of the information revolution has led to the digitalization of society, affecting virtually all of its concerns. The…  Read More