Tagging Everything: The Positive and Negative Social and Environmental Impacts
Abstract: The tagging of people, animals and things has allowed us to perform data collection at the individual unit level. Living and non-living things are now considered nodes on a network. Edge devices connected to the Cloud are now not only carried but lugged around allowing for dynamic tracking and monitoring capabilities. But as edge devices begin to interface with the body of a human, animal or asset, the question has to be posed- what are the positive and negative social and environmental impacts. This is especially true if we advocate for a position of collective awareness in the positive side- that by knowing ourselves and the world around us better we can preserve, conserve and see it be sustained and flourish into the future. On the flip side if we advocate for a position of uberveillance we are conducting an intrusive surveillance that can penetrate one’s perceived freedom and autonomy, beyond the harm that might come from attaching technology to the body, or piercing the body of a living thing. If large manufacturers discovered that identifying items with radiofrequency tags was prohibitive at the individual unit level; then what are the lessons learned for other attempts at collecting data of the world around us? What might be the fallout of sending autonomous systems out to crowdsource aspects of the world through auto-bots in urban centres or the wild? At the same time what about the benefits of discovery through citizen science beneficial experiences like that of QuestaGame or WildMe.org? This paper presents the pros and cons of tagging everything around us, and the ensuing social and environmental impacts.
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.
Conference Link: https://easychair.org/cfp/UEMGREEN-2021
Citation: Katina Michael, 22 April 2021, “Tagging Everything: The Positive and Negative Social and Environmental Impacts”, Keynote at UEMGreen: 2nd International Conference On Energy Management For Green Environment, https://tewarinitish121.wixsite.com/uem-green/speakers