OVERVIEW

A technology that in essence enables a low-cost connection between the physical world and large-scale networks has potentially revolutionary implications for society. To take a small example, RFID for automating retail operations has received significant attention in the past year. Pervasive tagging of physical objects raises privacy concerns and also issues of change in the workplace. However, there are far broader implications from the nexus of sensing and pervasive computing technologies from new social interactions to citizen control of monitoring activities previously the province of government through to large changes in the economy. While prediction of social outcomes of new technology is difficult, nevertheless we believe it is the responsibility of technology developers to engage with the broader community so that appropriate societal values can be built into the regulations and the information technology itself at an early enough stage to be cost-effective.

APPROACHES

The team listed under the people tab (above) have been participating in a discussion group funded by the UCLA Chancellor’s office on the implication of pervasive computing. This brings together faculty from Law, Engineering, Biology, History, Visual Arts, and Architecture. A series of discussions of different technological cases has reached the conclusion that not only is it possible to embed values in the design of information technologies, it is impossible not to do so. For example, choices on whether user authentication will be required for transactions have large implications for privacy and security. In the original version of the Internet, designed for peer to peer communication among research colleagues, there was no such requirement and further it was counter to the values of the user population. In commercial uses of the web however, user authentication is absolutely required for commercial transactions. The underlying structure of TCP/IP makes this more difficult to implement than had authentication been required from the beginning. Thus, the original architecture of the code biases an information technology towards a particular set of values, and while with some effort the code may be revised for new purposes the scale of the effort is larger as time progresses. Consequently, for embedded networked sensors it is important to consider exactly which values are to be embedded and the process by which this may occur.

In the past year, Prof Cuff has co-authored with Jerry Kang a paper on the impact of pervasive computing on the public sphere, and engaged in discussion on it with a subcommittee of the California state senate. Prof. Pottie testified at an August hearing on the implications of RFID technology. Subsequently a draft bill to regulate RFID and other electronic identification means has been circulated by Sen. Debra Bowen. Prof. Pottie also published a viewpoint column on RFID in the Communications of the ACM. A grant proposal was submitted to have a series of symposia on these topics, but unfortunately was not funded.

See also: Our Ethics Program Page