diverse topics as: Gender and ICT, Digital Divide, ICT ... The âdigital divide,â or questions of access to ICT ... es of the DMCA in his article âAnti-Circumvention.
GUEST EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION Joseph R. Herkert
ISTAS’02 — Social Implications of Information and Communication Technology
diverse topics as: Gender and ICT, Digital Divide, ICT and Development, ICT and Privacy, Intellectual Property in the Digital Age, Electronic Documents, Online Communities, Technology Policy, Teaching Computer Ethics, Online and Distance Learning, Information Security, and Design Issues in ICT. The authors and presenters at ISTAS’02 came from many different academic fields including engineering, computer science, communication, philosophy, and social science, as well as organizations such as consulting firms, NGOs, and government agencies. They came s the scope and impact of inforfrom more than a dozen countries on five mation and communication techcontinents. But all came with an apprecinology (ICT) has grown, society ation of the growing importance of ICT has begun to struggle with such issues as in the human experience, and the need privacy and security, equitable access, for multidisciplinary dialogue and freedom and responsibility in online understanding of the social and ethical speech, human-machine interaction, and issues interwoven with ICT. the impacts of ICT on work, leisure, and The papers selected for this special education. In the rush to develop a faster issue of T&S represent the breadth of microprocessor or a “killer” application, topics and diversity of contributors at it often seems that the engineers and comISTAS’02. Moral responsibility in puter scientists responsible for the develJoseph R. Herkert online communities, for example, is an opment of ICT have little or no awareness issue of growing concern to social scienof these matters. Over the past two tists, ethicists, and members of the technical commudecades a growing number of engineers, computer scinity. In their article “Virtual Harms and Real Responentists, social scientists, and ethicists have begun to sibility,” psychologist Chuck Huff, philosopher focus attention on ethical and socially responsible use of ICT, a difficult task that is compounded by the rapid Deborah Johnson, and computer scientist Keith Miller pace of technological development. The goal of the examine the issue of moral conduct in cyberspace by 2002 International Symposium on Technology and considering the notorious case of a virtual rape in an Society (ISTAS’02), held in Raleigh, NC, in June, was online environment. The authors propose a model for to bring together ICT professionals, computer science evaluating online harms and responsibility and draw and engineering educators, teachers and scholars in the some tentative conclusions that they further illustrate humanities and social sciences, policymakers, stu- with a discussion of virtual sex. The “digital divide,” or questions of access to ICT dents, and ICT users for the purpose of establishing critical dialogue on the social and ethical dimensions are of interest from both national and international perspectives. Simone Cecchini, formerly of the World of ICT. The presentations at ISTAS’02 were organized into Bank but now with the United Nations, draws our about 25 sessions and panel discussions on such attention to the exciting promise of and potential obstacles to using ICT to alleviate poverty in developJoseph Herkert is with North Carolina State Uni- ing countries in his article, “Tapping ICT to Reduce versity, Division of Multidisciplinary Studies, Box Poverty in Rural India.” Cecchini, drawing on his 7107, Raleigh, NC 27695-7107; email: joe_herkert fieldwork in India, points to a variety of sectors where @ncsu.edu. information and communication technologies promise
A
10
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, Summer 2003
to be of considerable import including education, healthcare, and micro finance. Cecchini notes, however, that if this potential is to be achieved, careful attention must be paid to such factors as providing affordable information infrastructure, leveraging grassroots organizations, and fostering community involvement. Ravi Shah of the Institute of Communications Research and Jay Kesan of the College of Law and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, focus their attention on “Incorporating Societal Concerns into Communication Technologies.” The authors illustrate how institutional environment can influence decisions about technology design by examining universities, private firms, international consortia, and the open source movement. Careful consideration of such organizational factors, they argue, can lead to more explicit choices regarding the design of ICT. Roberta Brody, of the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, Queens College, is also concerned with information design issues but her focus is on “Information Ethics in the Design and Use of Metadata.” While less obvious than the ethical issues involved in data itself, Brody argues that the ethical issues in the design and use of metadata, “descriptive or summary data about data,” are also worthy of attention by engineers and other design professionals. Brody is especially concerned with “fair representation” and its implications for information access. In addition to questions of ethical responsibility and societal context, developments in ICT have been
surrounded by a bewildering array of legal issues. Perhaps the most controversial piece of ICT legislation in the United States in recent years is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Attorney Dan Burk, concerned about the act’s anticircumvention provisions and their creation of rights not included in traditional concepts of intellectual property (known by some as “paracopyright”), discusses how the legal doctrine of misuse might be used as a check on abuses of the DMCA in his article “Anti-Circumvention Misuse.” Taken as a whole, the contributions to this special issue highlight both how far we have come in recognizing the social implications of ICT and how much work remains to ensure that ICT is developed in a manner that avoids exclusion and alienation of individuals and groups, and is sensitive to fundamental democratic notions, including personal freedom, dignity and privacy. ISTAS’02 was sponsored by IEEE-SSIT in cooperation with various units at North Carolina State University, the IEEE Computer Society, the IEEE Eastern North Carolina Section, the ACM Special Interest Group on Computers and Society, the Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science, and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility – RTP Chapter. My thanks go out to these sponsors, all of the ISTAS’02 participants for making it a successful meeting, the authors whose work is included here, and the reviewers who provided comments on this special issue.
Book Review (Continued from page 9)
public demonstration (by Fleming) of its apparatus when a man named Nevil Maskelyne exposed the wireless telegraph’s vulnerability to jamming. Chapter 5 is an examination of Fleming’s invention of the thermionic valve (or diode vacuum tube). Hong refutes the “canonical story” that Fleming sought from the outset to make a rectifying radio wave detector for reading Morse Code messages. In fact, he actually intended to invent a
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, Summer 2003
device for measuring the power of radio waves. Not until Marconi himself examined the valve were its properties as a rectifying detector discovered. The sixth essay analyzes how Fleming’s valve influenced the invention of de Forest’s audion, and traces “a theoretical and instrumental continuity between the arc and the oscillating audion.
11
