Evaluating and Controlling
Information and Communications
Technology
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Evaluating and Controlling
Technology
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Skills and judgment in an ICT-saturated world
Affects of ICT on community
Digital divide?
Political freedom: does ICT stimulate or impede
f d ?
freedom?
Evaluations of the impact of ICT: Luddites vs.
technology zealots
Is there a need to control ICT technology?
Modelling and prediction
Cmpt. 408
February 26 and 28
28, 2008
Skills and Judgment
Skills and Judgment
“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
T.S. Elliot, 1934
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
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Skills considered important in the past become less
necessary, for example
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• handwriting or calligraphy
• memorization (facts or poems)
• typing (now important, but speech recognition is becoming
cheaper and better all the time)
– wisdom of the masses?: Wikipedia vs Encyclopedia
Britannica
• is social correction enough to keep information
accurate or do you need expertise and editing?
– particular professions may not be needed (at least at
their current scale)
– photo manipulation: what is real and what isn’t?
– special interests: promoting causes, “hatchet” jobs
– search engine biases
• medical skills of a physician (due to telemedicine)
• lawyer’s skills (on-line law consultation systems), etc.
• emphasize what is popular, not necessarily correct
• manipulation by special interests
– need for intellectual skills may be reduced, i.e.
• mathematical calculation skills
• spelling, grammar skills
• intellectual laziness: giving away responsibility to computers
– fragmentation
• vastness of the web (information and people) ==>
each person selects their own reality
• the challenge of personalization tools
– languages are dying, transforming, appearing
• natural phenomenon, language reflects society
• enforced by technological decisions (often short-sighted)
– future?
• maybe humans will be “relieved” even from creative skills,
like painting, design, or writing poetry? (research in
computer emotions, intuition, new media, …)
• how should the educational system adapt to such rapid
changes?
• how to avoid shallow analysis, when digging deep requires
more effort and is therefore perceived to be inefficient? the
danger of shallow analysis in an increasingly complex world
There is a huge amount of information on the web
- how do we judge what’s reliable and what isn’t?
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Must therefore bring skills + judgment to web use
– use logic
l i and
d own experience
i
– consider the source of the information
– seek alternative explanations/information, on/off the
web
– use more than one search engine
– consider social elements: blogs, commentaries,
opinions of others
– look at meta-data (eg. change history in Wikipedia)
– … (lessons from assignment 1)
1
Effects of ICT on Community
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Community or isolation?
– what is community and how important is it to individuals
and society?
– virtual communities: how real are they?
– globalization vs fragmentation
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Access to information
– information “haves” and “have-nots”
– principle of universal access
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Does ICT have a negative impact on community,
social
i l and
d iinterpersonal
t
l iinteraction?
t
ti ?
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Digital Divide?
e-commerce and the WalMart effect
isolated geeks and computer game players
internet addiction
computers in schools resulting in reduced social contact
– achieved through
• the power of a free market
Æ prices drop when technology is mass produced;
expensive luxuries become everyday items
Æ not Information “haves” and “have-nots”, but
“have-laters”
• shared technology on a per use basis: internet
cafés
• voluntary community activities - i.e. access through
libraries, companies giving computers to employees
• government programs of support, subsidies
• legal restrictions or new taxes
Does ICT have a positive effect on community, social
and interpersonal interaction?
– social software: Facebook, blogs, wiki’s, e-mail, …
– new interest-specific on-line communities may be
formed
– much wider access to information
– smaller communities and firms may be enabled by ICT
– social changes are caused by many other factors as
well as ICT, e.g. urbanization, mobility
– increased efficiency using ICT frees up time for “real”
social activities
– telework allows move away from urban centres: good or
bad for community?
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The information revolution: by definition a revolution
has unpredictable consequences
Political Freedom
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Power to governments
– more power?
• easy to spy (encryption backdoors)
• universal data bases, SINs, etc.
• privacy laws, other laws
– less
l
power?
?
• net-based communications pose
dangers to repressive governments
• encryption
• fast spread of information: but how fast does
knowledge spread?
– extraterritoriality
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Power to corporations
– more power?
• mergers, large international corps., outsourcing
– less power?
• smallll companies
i h
have global
l b l web-presence,
b
on
par with multinational companies
• international mobilization against globalization
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everyone must be able to access the internet
it should be easy to use
training should be easily available
service should be affordable by all
access to all features
Neo-Luddite View of ICT
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Luddites are people who oppose technological
advances. They claim
– computers cause massive unemployment and deskilling of jobs
– computers
p
manufacture needs that are not basic
human needs
– computers cause social inequality and social
disintegration
– computers separate humans from nature, and destroy
the environment
– computers are de-humanizing and isolate people from
each other
– computers benefit big business and big governments
the most
– computers in schools will retard development and
teach uniform corporate values
– computers do little to solve real human problems;
information alone doesn't help
Power to individuals
– more power?
• powerful technology at the fingertips of individuals
• global reach
– less power?
• ubiquitous surveillance
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Arguments against the Neo-Luddite View
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The Need to Control ICT?
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– is there a role for censorship to prevent bad stuff?
– is there a role for control to encourage good stuff, or at
least a variety of stuff?
– which is the better analogy: the printed press or the
broadcast media? neither?
Who benefits the most from ICT?
– the big corporations that sell the technology or the
people who buy it?
– benefits depend on the needs/desires of people
– new needs/desires are created by ICT
– but also “basic” needs for food, shelter and healthy life
are satisfied better with the help of ICT
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Compare these parameters with previous centuries
Æ human life has become better and much longer
Luddites express different moral values (not
humanistic, but naturalistic), different philosophy
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– if you accept the axioms of their philosophy, their
arguments make at least somewhat more sense
Should bad / faulty/ too expensive technologies be
banned?
– are there intrinsically “bad” technologies?
– every technology is probably “faulty” in some aspect;
faulty technologies are the basis on which better (lessfaulty) technologies are developed
What are the benefits? Hard facts suggest
– wages have been going up in both rich and poor
countries
– price of food is sharply lower
– crop yields per hectare are much higher
– food supplies and GNP are increasing faster than
population (in developed countries with a lot of ICT)
– many major diseases have been eradicated
– life expectancy is much higher
– five-day working week (and shrinking?)
Controlling content on the internet
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Or should all new technologies be banned until they
have been studied?
– technologies have much wider effects than their
immediate design goals
– huge number of interlocking factors: other technologies,
social, demographic, economic, political, legal….
– how to predict the effects when even experts’
predictions about ICT have consistently failed?
– who
h should
h ld d
decide?
id ? - there
th
are various
i
groups with
ith
vested interests – e.g. against telemedicine
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Prevailing view is clearly based on the concept of the
free market and personal choice
Are we becoming too dependent on technologies that
are too complex, not fully understood Æ vulnerable?
– e.g. Y2K, digital identity theft, cyber-terrorism, etc.?
– complex systems Æ butterfly effects
– does ICT itself provide techniques that allow this
complex world to be modelled and accurate predictions
to be made?
Modelling and Prediction
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The potential of ICT to help predict complex
phenomena is high
– can capture many interacting factors in a
simulation and run the simulation to make
predictions
– useful to predict economic,
economic social,
social or physical
world, eg. effects of accidents on vehicle frames,
weather or climate forecasting, economy for the
next few years, simulated wind tunnel, urban
airflows, …
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Can we trust the predictions?
– it is only a model, not the real thing
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must make assumptions
missing factors
simplifications, especially in granularity
lack of understanding of underlying science
missing data
– contrast: modelling car crashes vs. global warming
predictions
– trend line is positive
• better understanding of science, engineering, the
natural and human world
• faster computers and better algorithms
– but must treat predictions with caution and ask
critical questions about modelling assumptions
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