Category: Societal Impact

NPR’s Richard Harris joins Andrew Maynard and Heather Ross to talk about his new book Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions.

Consider the fairly typical residence in this picture from Mfuwe, Zambia. This site has external sanitation facilities, a wood cook…  Read More

At Brave Conversations we tried to do something different — not to have a conventional conference where everyone hid behind their professional personae, delivered papers and were generally spoken at.

Licensing of Engineering Professionals: Is there any validity to this practice? The Education Department of the State of New York says — there is. IEEE Policy also says there is. The reality, I have come to continuously over four decades in practice as an electrical power engineer in the service of more than a dozen U.S. firms — is that there is none!

We need our brains to adapt advantageously for ingenious design and development, especially as the time between stimulus and response becomes precariously pressurized.

Which came first: technology or society? Did the formation of social collaboration among early humanoids precede the first “technological” advances (fire, stone tools, etc.), or did these technologies form the catalyst for building more complex social structures?

The next generation of socio-technical system can be seen as a kind of “focal point” for the convergence of a number of current trends in computing, information systems, and information technology. These trends include the technology-driven instrumentation of infrastructure by ubiquitous computing and/or “intelligent” devices, with the prefix “smart” now taking precedence over the prefix “e-,” i.e. SmartGrids, SmartCities, SmartMotorways, etc., rather than the e-commerce. e-health, e-learning initiatives commonplace at the turn of millennium.

Mining has had an impact on many Aboriginal communities in Australia. As we move to a mining sector where dump trucks, underground excavators, loaders, and conveyor systems are transformed into partial or fully autonomous systems, there is little or no human labor required other than to maintain equipment or provide oversight using a range of distant surveillance technologies.

There is an unshakable faith in our industry that we can do anything and that everything we do must be good and beneficial to society. Our industry has had similar crises before, such as dot-com busts, that exposed our assumptions, but the ideas are still here. As an industry and society, can we continue to develop solutions that unduly amplify human behavior – so that we provide and support a way for harm to be normalized? As an industry and society, can we continue to promote solutions based on long-held and dominate theories – so that the wider community is misled by influential advocates? The answer is a clear “no” to both.

Katina Michael on “What Makes Us Human?” Recorded on 14 June 2013 at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Video credit…  Read More

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine Editor-in-Chief Katina Michael has been recognized with SSIT’s highest award for service with the Brian M. O’Connell…  Read More

There is an increasing interest in, and implementation of the Internet of Things. As the number and types of interconnections…  Read More

A new archive of material added a new historical dimension to our discussions of cybernetics at the 2016 Norbert Wiener Conference in Australia.

Arthur Winston addressed to attendees of the 2016 IEEE Conference on Norbert Wiener in the 21st Century, Melbourne, Australia, held…  Read More

The future as depicted in works of science fiction, especially of the multiplex variety, is almost uniformly dystopian. The bleakness…  Read More

What are your values? I’m asking you, the reader. As a quick exercise, try to write down ten values you…  Read More

In the context of the IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems, and with support…  Read More

At the IEEE 2016 Conference on Norbert Wiener in the 21st Century, held in Melbourne, Australia, July 13–15, 2016, Keith…  Read More

Responsibilities of Scientists and Engineers in Times of Chaos and Upheaval If the future is coming at an ever accelerating…  Read More

Not So Fast: Thinking Twice about Technology. By Doug Hill. Univ. of Georgia Press, Oct. 15, 2016, 240 pp. In…  Read More