Smart Technologies for an Inclusive World
Conference: Smart Technologies for an Inclusive World - ICTO20
Title: Smart Technologies in the Public Interest
Abstract: Public interest technology (PIT) is an emergent field that brings together cross-disciplinary expertise to engage with operational and non-operational stakeholders toward the design and development of new societal processes. Principles of public interest technology include diversity and inclusion, responsibility and accountability, equity and access, respect and care. Much has been written on the potential for smart technologies to revolutionise the way we live and work but the question remains, who or what is it that determines the direction of our socio-cyber-physical trajectory? Bridging the gap between two seemingly separate stakeholder types: computing and engineering companies tasked with the roll-out of new technologies and services versus the requirement to satisfy societal needs is a complex endeavor. On the one hand there are corporations that are governed by the interests of their shareholders toward profit maximization, and on the other there are communities that have particular needs to be satisfied. This presentation will discuss the role of smart technologies in the public interest, a design philosophy that incorporates the public interest in a cooperative co-creative enterprise toward real sustainable solutions, and the risks associated with ignoring the public interest altogether and continuing to forge forward at the same rate of change without direct stakeholder engagement and deliberation.
Biography: Katina Michael is a professor at Arizona State University, holding a joint appointment in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and School of Computing, Informatics and Decisions Systems Engineering. She is also the director of the Society Policy Engineering Collective (SPEC) and the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society. Katina is a senior member of the IEEE and a Public Interest Technology advocate who studies the social implications of technology. She has held 13 annual workshops in the social implications of national security space and chaired 3 international symposia on technology and society (ISTAS) in Wollongong, Toronto and Phoenix. She is the Senior Editor of the socio-economic impact section in IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine and was the editor in chief of the award-winning IEEE Technology and Society Magazine. In 2019 she took on the role of working group chair for the IEEE P2089 standard. In 2017, she received the Brian M. O'Connell SSIT Distinguished Service Award.
In the 1990s, Katina was employed as a senior network planner at Nortel Networks and systems analyst at Andersen Consulting and OTIS. In 2002 she entered academia as a lecturer at the University of Wollongong and in 2013 became a member of the executive team in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences as the Associate Dean – International, overseeing 8 partner and twinning arrangements for the University in the UAE, Malaysia, Singapore, China and Hong Kong. Katina completed a Masters degree in transnational crime prevention in the Faculty of Law with a UOW postgraduate scholarship in 2007, and was later invited to teach cybercrime in the law school. Her PhD was on systems of innovation in the automatic identification industry.
Citation: Katina Michael, 1 October 2020, “Smart Technologies in the Public Interest”, Smart Technologies for an inclusive world, https://icto2020.webs.com/