Social and Technical Implications

1. Social and Technical Implications

2. Into the Information Age Major shifts in way of life/economy hunter-gatherer economy gives way to agricultural economy (plow / farming) gives way to industrial economy (machines / factories) gives way to information/knowledge economy (information and communications technology)

3. What is Affected? Entertainment Publishing Medicine Airlines Science Work Education … Anything involving information

4. Computers at Work

5. Employment and Unemployment The Bad News: Because of automation, the unskilled, uneducated worker may face a lifetime of minimum wage jobs or welfare Technology may be helping to create an unbalanced society with two classes: a growing mass of poor uneducated people a shrinking class of affluent educated people “My father had worked for the same firm for 12 years. They fired him. They replaced him with a tiny gadget this big that does everything that my father does only it does it much better. The depressing thing is my mother ran out and bought one.” --Woody Allen

6. Employment and Unemployment The Good News: technology will continue to spur economic growth and new jobs: the knowledge economy economic growth may depend on whether we have a suitably trained workforce the demand for professionals, teachers, health care workers, and engineers –is likely to rise painful periods of adjustment may be in store for many factory workers, clerical workers, and other semi-skilled and unskilled laborers

7. Computers and Jobs De-skilling when a job is transformed by technology so that it requires less skill example: role of university registration ‘clerks’ replaced by on-line registration process (may lead to fewer positions) Up-skilling when a job becomes more technical, requiring the worker to have more skills example: remaining registration ‘clerks’ need increased capability to understand, consult and error correct within automated registration system

8. Computers and Jobs Often, systems are introduced without due consideration of the way people work and interact workers expected to adjust to unyielding systems user training and support often inadequate Scope of Software Development Scope of System Development

9. Human-Centered Systems Most successful computer systems are human centered: designed to retain and enhance human skills rather than take them away systems analysts and designers must understand the work practices of the people who’ll use the system successful systems development involve partnerships between IT and domain experts users of the systems are involved in designing the system and the system-related jobs most common cause of system development failure is lack of user involvement

10. Automated Office Workgroup computing – as knowledge workers become more specialized, the need to work together on projects increases workflow software provides project control and document management groupware helps people work in groups and teams intranets control internal access to information, devices and processes while maintaining security extranets share information or operations with suppliers, vendors, partners, customers or other businesses Can radically change the way businesses operate flexible integrated distributed “paperless office”

11. Monitoring and Surveillance Using computer technology to track, record, and evaluate worker performance, often without the knowledge of the worker Problems privacy morale devalued skills loss of quality

12. Compliance Through Trust Enforcement Action US Companies Monitor employee connections to check for “inappropriate surfing” 76 % 55 % Retain and review employee e-mail Store and review employee computer files 50 % 36 % Track content, keystrokes and time spent on computer Source: American Management Association & the E-Policy Institute (Globe: Oct. 7, 2006)

13. Compliance Through Trust Enforcement Action US Companies 8 % Use GPS systems to track vehicles Use GPS to monitor company issued cell phones 5 % “There is no reason to believe that the situation is much different in Canada” Prof. David Zweig; University of Toronto Source: American Management Association & the E-Policy Institute (Globe: Oct. 7, 2006)

14. Telecommuting Pros reduces # of commuters, thus saving energy, reducing pollution, and decreasing congestion saves time allows for a more flexible schedule can increase productivity facilitates project, contract and casual work positions can provide increased opportunity for the disabled Cons doesn’t fit those jobs requiring interaction requires self-discipline to avoid either working too little or too much office social life missing low visibility may promote out-sourcing

15. Globalization and Outsourcing • Globalization is the creation of worldwide businesses and markets • Outsourcing is the migration of jobs to countries where labour is less expensive • Strongly supported by ICT: workflow management, supply chain management http://www.inventureglobal.com/blog/2008/02/outsourcing/offshore-outsourcing-statistics-for-services-in-2007/ Image from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2006/10/08/windia08.jpg

16. Electronic Sweatshops 100s of clerks sitting at terminals in massive, windowless rooms Workers - often minorities and almost always female - paid minimum wage to do mindless keyboarding • Many experience headaches, backaches, serious wrist injuries, stress, anxiety, and other health problems • OCR and voice recognition technologies will eventually replace workers with machines

17. Questions • Do you think there will be a paperless office? • Should employers have the right to monitor employees as the statistics presented? Would you want to be monitored like this? • What do you think about globalization and outsourcing? • Are any jobs safe from automation?

18. Questions Do you think that with machines replacing many jobs there will be more time for leisure? Should large companies be required to retrain workers for other jobs if their job is replaced by machines? Should large companies be required to file “employment impact statements” before replacing people with machines in the same way they’re required to file environmental impact statements before implementing policies that might harm the environment?

19. Computers at School

20. The Roots ofOur School System • The industrial age school system has been described as a factory model for three reasons: • it assumes that all students learn the same way and that all students should learn the same things • the teacher’s job is to “pour” facts into students, occasionally checking the level of knowledge in each student • students are expected to work individually, absorb facts, and spend most of their time sitting quietly in straight rows

21. Information Age Education Research and experience suggest education should provide the following for students: technological familiarity (overcoming technophobia) literacy mathematics culture communication learning how to learn – how do you prepare people for jobs/careers that don’t even exist yet? a student perspective: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o&feature=related and a response from professors: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ1jFaXgTnw&feature=related

22. Computers Go to School Students in this class build LEGO robots and write LOGO programs to control them. Computer-controlled media are being used to convey information in a more dynamic form Distance education uses technology to extend the educational process beyond the walls of the school

23. Education in the Information Age Computer-Aided Instruction (CAI) • CAI software combines tutorial material with drill-and-practice questions in an interactive format that provides instant student feedback. • CAI is one of the most common types of courseware • it is relatively easy and inexpensive to produce • it can be easily combined with more traditional educational techniques • individualized learning, student can move at own pace • motivation, can turn practice into a game • it works best in tightly defined subjects where there is a single right answer • it present facts, leaving little room for questioning or creativity – “programming students”

24. Education in the Information Age Intelligent Tutoring Systems • Intelligent tutoring systems: incorporating AI to make system responsive to individual student needs and knowledgeable about the subject • Lots of examples • Andes Physics Tutor http://www.andestutor.org/its2008-demo/s2e-screenshot-3.gif • Betty’s Brain • student teaches the tutoring system (about ecology) http://www.teachableagents.org/ • Cognitive Tutors • for programming. algebra, geometry, … • used in U.S. schools by hundreds of thousands of students each year http://www.carnegielearning.com/ • many more

25. Education in the Information Age Simulations and Games • Allow students to explore artificial environments, whether imaginary or based on reality • Educational simulations are metaphors designed to focus student attention on the most important concepts • Very useful for many kinds of applications • skill-based training, eg. airplane, spacecraft simulations • cultural and language immersion, eg. Tactical Iraqi, et al:http://www.tacticallanguage.com/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUr8k73D8zY • professional certification, eg. pressure boiler tutoring system needed for certification • complex environments, eg. business games, ethics games …

26. Education in the Information Age Designing and Programming Scratch: http://scratch.mit.edu Students create programs from snap-together pieces and fill in details courses: Cmpt: 105, Cmpt. 106 Students can create games or simple animations After creating the programs, they can share them on the user website

27. Education in the Information Age Some other support tools for teaching and learning courseware to help teachers create courses Blackboard (formerly known as WebCT) iHelp Courses Moodle tools to help students iHelp discussion forums and chat intelligent agents artificial learning companions

28. Computers at School Pros improve problem-solving skills, outscore classmates, and learn more rapidly students’ self-esteem increased when they use computers most dramatic in cases of at-risk youngsters and students with handicaps using technology encourages cooperative learning, turn taking among young children, peer tutoring, and other valuable social skills students can become more productive, more fluid writers with computers

29. Computers at School Cons if the only thing that changes is the delivery medium, the advantages of technology are small—or nonexistent kids and teachers forget advanced computer skills if they don’t use them students have unequal access to technology; economically disadvantaged students have less computer access at school and at home there is a gender gap that typically puts the computer room “in the boys’ domain” computers need to be integrated into the classroom to be most effective

30. Questions • In many schools, students spend two years of math education learning long division -- a skill that's almost never used in the information age. Some educators argue that students' time could be better spent learning other things. What do you think? • What kind of education does a student need to prepare for living and working in the information age? How are these skills similar or different than those required 100 years ago? • What will a class room look like in 5 years? 10 years?

31. Computers and Society

32. Social Issues: Privacy Much information on-line on-line shopping patterns government and corporate databases frequent buyer programs cell phone calling patterns e-portfolios Much interest by security agencies, commercial interests Putting this information together data mining to find patterns Protection? heterogeneity: information sources are different legal: privacy act (Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic DocumentsAct) technical safeguards: encryption of data, smart cards, passwords social and management: privacy policies, advocacy and publicity

33. Social Issues: Free Speech Some issues involving the internet and free speech publishing for the masses: internet and web provide people with a worldwide forum what about bad things such as child pornography? spam? extraterritoriality: what laws apply when anything can be published from anywhere? anonymity and pseudonymity: “on the internet nobody knows you’re a dog” intellectual property: how to protect? should it be protected or is open source the appropriate model for the internet?

34. Social Issues:Social Networking

35. Social Issues:Social Networking

36. Social Issues:Social Networking Some issues involving social networking how much time should people spend networking with each other? is there an upper limit before it becomes pathological? is social networking any different from “face-to-face” social interaction? what is different? what is the same? are we changing human cognition, eg. attention span? globalization vs localization: are we headed towards one giant global community or many fragmented communities? can we really interact with 6 billion people? what size of communities are we genetically or culturally adapted to? if there are many fragmented communities, how can we move towards needed global perspectives? how is information really shared among people on the internet? how fast can it really disseminate?

37. Questions Will technology be the great equalizer or a tool for the powerful to become even more wealthy and influential? Will the global village be a community or many fragmented villages? Are humans capable of adapting to the higher stimulation, faster pace, and constant change of the information age? Have we become information slaves? What happens if machines start to think on their own? Where does that leave us? Is it just the next natural step in evolution? What will your life be like as the information revolution continues to roll forward?

38. Far Out Ideas Speculations About the Influence of Information and Communications Technology in the Near Term, Medium Term, and Longer Term Future

39. Looking to the Future Technology progress is hard to foresee, and it is even harder to predict the impact that technology will have on society Many barely remember a world without computers, yet it wasn’t so long ago that people couldn’t imagine a world *with* computers CRA “grand challenges” http://archive.cra.org/reports/gc.systems.pdf Careers in computing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvhYDTh9T2A The 1930 movie Just Imagine presented a bold, if not quite accurate, vision of the future; here Maureen O’Sullivan sits in her personal flying machine.

40. Near Term Future • The Cloud • software provided as a service: now web mail, Google docs: soon, possibility that virtually all computing will be in the cloud • http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/what-cloud-computing-really-means-031 • personal computer fades as main computing platform: replaced by mobile devices accessing remote servers • 24/7/365 access to computing from anywhere by anybody • but what about privacy? and reliability? • The Data Deluge • so much data is now produced in electronic form: clickstream data from human-computer interaction, human-human interaction by voice and text, social networking data, data about workflows, sensor data, databases full of information about everything, most printed works, music and video, … • estimated 2010: 1200 exabytes of information (exabyte = 1 million terabytes) • http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15579717 • possibility to make sense of this information through data mining and statistical techniques; possibility even to transform social sciences • but how do we store all of this? and how do we tractably process it? • drinking from a firehose!

41. Near Term Future • The IT Afterlife– Does the ‘Data Self’ Keep on ‘Living’? • what is left on-line after we die? who will ‘clean-up’? • access to ancestors’ lives? • what will the future make of us? • the birth of history? • http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/sep/30/digital-afterlife-email-facebook • The End of Wire • universal wireless standards • death of cable and wired interaction? • http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/wireless/products_category_technologies_overview.html • Secure Micropayment System • finally Ted Nelson’s dream: all transactions mediated with small, automatic payments from buyer’s to seller’s account • unleashing revolution in on-line commerce? • http://www.scottmccloud.com/3-home/essays/2003-09-micros/micros.html

42. Near Term Future • Moral Issues inAbsolute Photorealism / Virtual Reality • absolute photorealism (AP) means any ‘picture’ could be simulated • convergence of virtual reality (VR) and personalization tools • role for the state in ‘policing’ of self-developed AP/VR objects? • murder/torture in a virtual world (far beyond Grand Theft Auto!) • virtual pornography, virtual child pornography, virtual social deviance • are these crimes when no person in the real world is involved? • http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23844 • http://cyb3rcrim3.blogspot.com/2007/11/virtual-child-pornography-product.html • http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/tests/hoaxphototest.html • Interactive Government and e-Democracy • access to all government records on-line • new internet marketing techniques • direct democracy through e-voting: the end of representative government? • is this good for democracy? • http://www.edemocracy-forum.com/ • http://www.cnnbcvideo.com/?nid=81O.n61P_J8jrwdjxTkbojk3MTAzMDI-&referred_by=13902483-Zb38QDx

43. Near Term Future • Augmented Reality • virtual overlays on reality • already possible via mobile devices, cameras equipped with object recognition, small portable data projectors; eg. Pranav Mistry’s SixthSense • http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html • future may use heads-up displays and eye control • http://www.economist.com/search/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14299602 • Electronic Law Enforcement • race between electronic criminals and electronic detection methodologies • regular crimes recorded and analyzed through ubiquitous cameras and analysis of websites, databases and communication patterns • http://people.cs.ubc.ca/~lowe/vision.html • http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/RL31798.pdf • need to track individuals: increasingly need to stop a small group or even a single malevolent individual • how do we protect privacy in such an environment?

44. Medium Term Future • Ubiquitous Technology • already widespread access to technology via mobile devices • sensor networks • embedded and pervasive technology, leading to capabilities like collision free driving • http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/10/nissan-to-show-eporo-robot-cars-collisionfree-driving-by-mimicking-fish-behavior.html • Mash Ups by Everyone • increasingly possible for non-programmers to create software • will be further encouraged by published API’s, standards like XML, new kinds of languages like ALICE with an “adaptation” programming paradigm • http://www.alice.org/ • everybody a software creator?

45. Medium Term Future • Digital Augmentation of People • implantation of identity chips • “bionic eyes” and other sensory augmentation • http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6368089.stm • connecting spinal cords directly to muscles and brain-computer interfacing • http://novascience.wordpress.com/category/brain-neuroscience/mind-reading/brain-computer-interface/ • Organic Computing • replacing silicon with carbon • one material throughout entire system • http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16506-organic-computing-takes-a-step-closer.html

46. Medium Term Future • Optic (Photonic) Computing • computing with light (perhaps 100,000 times faster than electronics) • http://www.photonics.com/Article.aspx?AID=41611 • no heat, much larger bandwidth • a photonic transistor already developed • Quantum Computing • based on the laws of quantum physics • quantum computers are based on qubits not bits; a computer with n qubits can be in a superposition of 2n states simultaneously • http://www.howstuffworks.com/quantum-computer.htm • computation becomes massively parallel • hard search problems may suddenly become very easy • may challenge things like cryptography but lead to much better AI

47. Medium Term Future • Self-Assembling Structures • already we have 3D copiers • http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14299512 • already we have computers helping to build other computers • increasingly will be able to manufacture any object from design “just-in-time”, including computers • what if computers can self-replicate? • John von Neumann and Arthur W. Burks, Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata, U. of Illinois Press, 1966 • Personal Agents • “living” on the internet • finding us information • helping us plan our lives • towards a “life-long” companion: as in Neal Stephenson’s “Diamond Age”:http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/stephenn/diamond.htm

48. Longer Term Future • Nanotechnology and Artificial Life:Smart Dust • very small autonomous nano-bots • could be used for good (eg. inserted in the blood stream) or bad (eg. espionage) • if self replicating, then worries about out-of-control propagation: Bill Joy’s worry about “grey goo”: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html • Androids and Intelligent Robots • robots are getting more sophisticated • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn6co3-CBzc • RoboCop vs the Terminator • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGva3yU8RZw • Real War Games • SIMNET “tightly align(s) training systems with real combat readiness and make them indistinguishable” • http://www.sisostds.org/webletter/siso/iss_39/art_202.htm • will computer ‘games’ decide wars (not real war)?

49. Longer Term Future • The Ultimate Oracle • web has much human knowledge, but in a huge variety of forms and not able to be reasoned with that much by the computer • target: knowledge base for all human knowledge with reasoning capability too • could answer any question • CYC project already exists: http://www.cyc.com/ • Nested Universes • notion of the internet as an eco-system, nested in our universe • already self-replicating forms like viruses “live” in the eco-system and web-bots of various sorts that travel about • what if we create intelligent agents that also “live” in this eco-system? • are we “God” for intelligent personal agents? is our universe nested in some containing universe? • see Rob Sawyer’s “Wake” for a similar notion, where the web itself becomes conscious and intelligent • http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/afterword/archive/2009/04/18/book-review-wake-by-robert-j-sawyer.aspx

50. Longer Term Future • Alternative Lives through Virtual Reality • virtual reality currently fairly crude, but getting better • now much research in three senses: sight, sound, touch • probably other senses will soon be added • can we improve this to achieve something like the holodeck on Star Trek, Next Generation, eg. Ship in the Bottle episode: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708773/ • The Singularity • silicon augmentation for human memory • information transfers between people’s silicon memories (thought transfer) • bio-cyber syntheses: cyborgs • downloading “intelligence” into digital form: immortality? • the Singularity Institute: http://singinst.org/ • ???????????????