Throughout history, technology had been influential in driving societal change. Most recently, this has included an evolving relationship with information, characterized by innovations that have transformed how information is transmitted, stored, and ultimately used. Advances in high-performance computing, optic networks, near-limitless digital storage, (semi-)autonomous machines, transportation of goods and ideas, artificial intelligence, etc., have (and are) impacting sociocultural, economic, political, and even the psychological understandings of social relations. The nature of society across local- to global-scales has been impacted by new networks, interdependencies, and imagined futures that both enhance and threaten social orders.
This topic seeks to explore the impact(s) of emerging technologies on social structures and concomitant relationships. Particularly, it is comparatively concerned with how the impact of technological change varies across different societies and across micro-, meso-, and macro-scales. It is assumed that proposals will similarly seek to understand how/if different emerging technologies lead to different categories of social impact(s) and how varied international approaches to emerging technological change may present new opportunities and risks to local-, regional-, and global-orders. Furthermore, proposals should include an appreciation of the moral and ethical implications technological change may present to different societies.
Specific areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
• The impact of changing relationships to knowledge and skill development, and the supplanting of expertise, particularly in relation to information that is heavily processed with minimal input by humans, such as artificial intelligence processing information and turning it into “knowledge” and in some contexts, decisions.
• How will institutions traditionally charged to facilitate learning evolve in societies where the construction of knowledge is no longer solely, if at all, undertaken by the human? How would institutions differ across societies?
• The impact of emerging technology on the nature and characterization of work such as organizational structure, division of labor, and what it means to be a professional.
• How has emergent technology impacted society’s relationship with it, what are new risks for individuals and groups, and what are societal impacts when competing interests arise among allies, partners, and competitors.
• How do differences in technology penetration, such as speed and intensity, effect adoption of or resistance to technology? What is the societal impact of uneven adoption rates across different scales and how does this influence perceptions of well-being.
• The impact of increased incorporation of virtual-based and fully-integrated platforms into everyday life.
• How do different approaches to Future Generation Wireless Technology and connectivity, be it centralized or decentralized, restricted or more open and collaborative, impact social relations, perceptions of security, and application/usage.
• How will technology proliferation impact know resource costs, and what are the effects on society and concomitant relationships? Likewise, how can unknown resource costs, along with societal implications, be identified?