This page provide a list of topics involving the social, environmental, economic and political impact of technology.
This page is not exhaustive and it is not academically rigorous. I have added content as issues appear in the national, regional and local news. The information on these pages is intended to stimulate your thinking, not constrain it.
The topics are listed without any implication about their order of significance or chronology.
The US Department of energy has an overview of residential energy consumption
The US Energy Information Administration's Energy in Brief is a series of articles on different aspects of energy generation and consumption.
Consider this interview with Lester Brown on Fresh Air. Be sure to listen to the end when Mr. Brown is asked whether he is a pessimist or an optimist. He answers by describing the US response to the attach on Pearl Harbor.
Seventy percent of the surface of the earth is covered by water, mostly in the oceans. Those oceans are not that deep compared to the radius of the earth. In May 2012, the USGS published an image that depicted the amount of water on the earth gathered into a single sphere. Jay Kimball modified the USGS image to show a sphere proportional to the amount of fresh water next to the sphere of all water on the earth. Both images are stunning in showing that the answer to the question, "How much water is on earth?" is "not that much".
Pilotless drones, also known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are being used regularly by the US Military to spy on and kill declared enemies. Wikipedia provides an overview of the technology.
Military UAVs exist in many configurations. A large fraction of military drones are used for surveillance. Larger UAVs, such as the MQ-9 REAPER are equipped with an assortment of missiles.
Armed UAVs provide distinct military advantages. These systems can hover over targets for long period while pilots on the ground can take breaks or change shifts. The systems allow attacks over great distances and in difficulty terrain without risking the life of the pilot. And currently, the US has a decided advantage in using UAVs as weapons.
In a 2009 book Wired for War, Peter Singer, described an array of robotic weapons, including UAVs. For a quick overview of the issues, refer to Singer's testimony to the US Congress in March 2010. The political implications of military UAVs is starting to register in the mainstream political debate. For example an article in the October Washington Post. describes the "kill list" used in choosing the targets of UAV weapons. The New America Foundation is tracking the deaths by drone attacks.
Not done:
Local issues:
The good comes with the bad:
Gary Marcus, in a 2012 essay in the New Yorker points out the coming ethical dilemma posed by machines that are more competent than us
Within two or three decades the difference between automated driving and human driving will be so great you may not be legally allowed to drive your own car, and even if you are allowed, it would be immoral of you to drive, because the risk of you hurting yourself or another person will be far greater than if you allowed a machine to do the work
Marcus draws the parallel with the need for humans to continue to evolve our ethical understanding. He goes on to argue that we can't wait to figure out how to give machines the ability to reason about ethics.
Building machines with a conscience is a big job, and one that will require the coordinated efforts of philosophers, computer scientists, legislators, and lawyers. And, as Colin Allen, a pioneer in machine ethics put it, "We don't want to get to the point where we should have had this discussion twenty years ago." As machines become faster, more intelligent, and more powerful, the need to endow them with a sense of morality becomes more and more urgent.
Nicholas Carr initiated an interesting discussion with his blog post titled Moral Code (27 Nov 2012). One of the central questions debated is how we will delegate moral/ethical decision-making to machines. The "how" question is not about the mechanics of implementing a decision in software. The "how" question is more about who decides and what decisions are encoded in our machines. This is already done: algorithms (sometimes embodied in mechanical devices) decide when to deploy air-bags or when to release steam from a boiler when the pressure exceeds a threshold. Humans have made the decisions that the computer (or mechanism) executes. The debate in the comment section (do read the comments!) is mostly about whether a future with more complex robots represents a qualitatively different situation. Carr thinks it is. Several of the commentators think it is not. A variation on this argument is to what degree are our safety algorithms the result of some human moral decision-making, and to what degree is it an argument about insurance liability and legal battles over who has to pay for bad outcomes. I'll need to re-read the post and the thread. Please visit that discussion yourself.
As another jumping-off point for further exploration, consider the Singularity Institute.
Prosthetics are common for people with missing limbs. As technology advances the use of active prosthetics is becoming more feasible. In sports, the ethical implications of high performance prosthetics are being debated. Oscar Pistorius, who runs on carbon fiber "blades" qualified for the 400m semifinals in the 2012 Olympic games in London. He did not make it to the finals. but he is in the class of elite athletes competing in track events.
Prosthetics are becoming fashionable as well as. begin functional. Aimee Mullins, who was born without fibular bones between her knees and feet, is a model and athlete. She gives an inspiring talk at TED. People who have lost parts of their limbs are even choosing optional amputation.
The use of prosthetics, or any medical technology, to counteract the consequence of disease or accident is broadly acceptable. Use of technology to help someone "return to normal" does not raise too many ethical questions. However, what about going beyond "normal" and using technology for human augmentation? This article at bloomberg.com gives a quick visual overview of technology at the boundary between restoration of function and human augmentation. A podcast by science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer explores the future. (Direct YouTube link.)
Implantable devices -- heart pacemakers, drug delivery devices, and brain stimulators -- are another area where man/machine interfaces are common and growing in sophistication. Those devices can use Wi-Fi to communicate with clinical equipment outside of the human body. This introduces a vulnerability to a wi-fi attack. According to a recent report, researchers at MIT have developed a device that can safely jam the communication channel between the device and the outside world, thereby preventing unauthorized communication and even an attack on the person wearing the implant.
Electronic implants and augmentation are explored in some recent science fiction writing by Daniel Wilson in his book Amped and by John Scalzi in his book. Old Man's War and others. As the novelist and former robotics research Dan Wilson explains in an article in the Wall Street Journal and in an interview in Wired, humans are experimenting with electronic and mechanical augmentation of their bodies.
Neural-electronic implants require a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) which according to Wikipedia began with work in the 1970s. Early articles on Intelligence Amplification are listed on this Wikipedia page
Here are some technical articles from a very superficial web search
The BBC has a succinct article on the nuclear reactor troubles in Fukushima, Japan
Scientific American has a one year timeline from March 2011 to March 2012 on the disaster.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has a detailed chronology of events through June 2011, a maintains a web page on the status of the disaster and a report of Japanese Government to the IAEA.
Update, 5 July 2012: A report by a panel of experts convened by the Japanese parliament has concluded that "The Fukushima nuclear disaster was the result of 'manmade' failures before and after last year's earthquake. An executive summary of the report is available from the [http://naiic.go.jp/en](National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission). Note: the "National Diet" of Japan is the bicameral legislature, see, e.g. wikipedia.
The report is described by several news sources. According to a Reuter's article
"The ... Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and Tepco, and the lack of governance by said parties," the panel said in an English summary of a 641-page Japanese document.
...
Regulators, it said, had been reluctant to adopt global safety standards that could have helped prevent the disaster in which reactors melted down, spewing radiation and forcing about 150,000 people from their homes, many of whom will never return.
"Across the board, the Commission found ignorance and arrogance unforgivable for anyone or any organisation that deals with nuclear power. We found a disregard for global trends and a disregard for public safety," the panel said.
It's interesting that the earthquake and subsequent tsunami are not being blamed as the cause of the problems. According to the Businessweek article
The findings couldn't rule out the possibility that the magnitude-9 earthquake damaged the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 1 reactor and safety equipment. This is a departure from other reports that concluded the reactors withstood the earthquake, only to be disabled when the ensuing tsunami slammed into the plant.
This finding may have implications for all Japan's atomic plant operators if it leads to tougher earthquake-resistance standards. The operators reported combined losses of 1.6 trillion yen ($20 billion) in the year ended March owing to safety shutdowns of the country's 50 reactors and higher fuel bills when they started up gas and oil-fired plants.
...
If the Fukushima reactor had already been crippled by the quake when the tsunami hit, it would force regulators to reconsider the seismic criteria that all Japan's plants need to follow, their so-called design basis, said Najmedin Meshkati, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Southern California who has researched nuclear safety in Japan.
It appears that report leads to blaming people, not the reactor design (which, of course was created by people). This allows the argument that the reactors are not inherently unsafe, and that a repeat of this problem can be avoided with better oversight. It is not clear what kind of physical/engineering changes will result from better oversight.
The IEEE Spectrum summarizes the Chernobyl disaster on the 25th anniversary of that event (28 April 1986). Several web sites have pictures from Chernobyl. The International Atomic Energy Agency has a 25th anniversary retrospective and large collection of stories.
Could a low-cost Geiger counter that works with the open source Arduino microcontroller provide a way for people in Japan to monitor their exposure?
Safecast uses volunteers and other sources of data to share data on nuclear radiation levels in the environment. This is currently of great interest in the north and west of Japan.
The existence of global warming is an issue that is settled in the scientific community, yet it continues to be debated by governments and interest groups. A key tool of those who dispute the scientific evidence is to point to the uncertainties that climate scientists cite in their own work. A recent article (April 2012) in the Insurance Journal summarizes recent scientific studies that put the degree of doubt in perspective.
Hurricane Sandy is credited with renewing the debate on climate change.
Too much wind for the grid to handle: According to the Seattle Times the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) recently said that power from wind farms may not be used during times of high spring run-off from snow melt. Here is a list of BPA articles related to the transmission of energy generated by wind power. Among the documents is a glossy fact sheet from October 2010.
The issue came to a head in May 2011 when, as wind supporters worried, BPA announced that it will force wind energy producers to shut down.
Another issue with wind farms is that the turbines kill wild birds.
Petroleum in shale deposits can be extracted by a process called fracking that involves pumping steam and chemicals deep into the ground to break up the rock and lower the viscosity of the oil. This process also causes ground water pollution. In Pennsylvania residents claim that their drinking water is so contaminated with chemicals that water running from a tap can be set on fire.
For a more general background on Natural gas usage and supplies, consult the US Energy Information Association. The EIA has a good introduction to shale gas.
Richard Pierce, Jr., Professor of Law at the George Washington University, has a brief post giving an overview of the legal and political issues around fracking.
An article in the Wall Street Journal (behind the pay wall) suggested that the EPA will be increasing regulation on fracking. The Houston Chronicle has a similar report.
In a blog post Jeff McMahon identifies a new modified silica called Osorb that removes more than 90 percent of the hazardous chemicals that are dumped into the "produced water". The blog post also describes the fracking process.
Update, 25 August 2011: In May 2011, Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, appointed a panel of seven to make recommendations for regulations and drilling practices. The report was released on August 11, 2011. An article on the Pro-publica web site provides an overview from a environmental law perspective. The vice president of public and government affairs for Exxon Mobil wrote blog post to complain about the lack of industry input while a group of environmental scientists wrote a letter to complain that six out of seven members of the panel had financial ties to the oil industry.
Update, 12 November 2011: There is concern that the dramatic increase in earthquakes in Oklahoma may be linked to fracking. This is very much an open question and there is only correlation, not evidence of causation.
All electric vehicles do not pay gas taxes, yet those vehicles put wear and tear on the highways. How will the state of Oregon finance road repair and construction in the future when an increasing number of vehicles that use the roads are not providing revenue via the gas tax?
One suggestion is to use Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to monitor the miles driven by electric vehicles. That is an interesting technological solution, but it introduces the potential for loss of privacy if the details of the GPS records are not kept confidential. How will drivers know that their movements recorded by the DMV are not being passed on to the state police, or worse yet, individuals inside the government with a partisan agenda?
The lack of a charging stations is another obstacle to a transition to electrical vehicles. On May 20, 2011, the Oregonian reported on the chicken-and-egg problem with the deployment of charging stations. An important contributor to the installation of charging station is a company called Ecotality
Ecotality, the San Francisco company awarded $130 million by the U.S. Department of Energy to build the network of public charging stations, was supposed to have 1,100 installed in Oregon by the end of next month [June 2011]. But as of last week it has yet to install a single public station in Oregon.
Not one.
Without charging stations, consumers will be reluctant to buy all-electric vehicles. Without a sufficient consumer demand for electric vehicles, building out a network of recharging stations will be a substantial risk. Is there an engineering solution to this technology problem?
Update: On June 8, 2011, charging stations in Northeast Portland and Wilsonville were open to the public. Currently these stations operate free of charge. The stations take four hours to charge a car. According to the article in the Oregonian there are currently 30 owners of all-electric vehicles in the city.
In Fall 2010, PGE wanted to use the Boardman Coal Plant for the remaining 30 years of its design life. Coal is a source of CO2 and other pollutants. PGE is considering switching the Boardman plant to biofuel grown near the plant. The biofuel requires irrigation, which competes with food crops that are also grown in the region.
On December 9, 2010 the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission has approved PGE's plan to close its coal-fired power plant near Boardmen in 2020.
As described in this this article, predictive algorithms are just starting to be used in health care. The idea is to use semi-empirical models with real-time monitoring of data from sensors to predict when a patient might be experiencing a medical problem.
Predictive algorithms are used in many other areas, but not yet in medicine. It would seem that there are many benefits to be gained, and some ethical issues to be resolved.
On a simpler technological level, Atul Gawande argues in his book Checklist Manifesto, that following checklists improves outcomes for complex tasks. A checklist is a simple algorithm that does not require a computer for its implementation.
On the NPR Radio Show, Fresh Air, Terry Gross interviews Michael Specter, who published an article in the New Yorker about "In-vitro Meat", i.e. protein tissue with the genetic make-up of animal flesh that is grown without an animal. This activity raises technical and ethical issues. Some see synthetic meat as a way to provide food without killing animals, and with potentially more efficient use of resources. That would reduce the ethical dilemma of raising millions of animals just to slaughter them for food. Against that benefit is the concern that this technology will give pharmaceutical companies even more control over our lives.
FastCompany has a short video on the technology being developed by Beyond Meat to use soy beans to create a synthetic "meat" that has the same texture and "mouth feel" as chicken.
Modern Meadow is developing "edible cultured meat" and synthetic leather. More information about the process of creating synthetic leather are in an article on the Scientific American web site.
The book Blown to Bits describes how pervasive collection, storage, and analysis of personally identifying information has forever changed our privacy and autonomy. This is a huge area of concern. Several sub-areas could be suitable for projects.
The book can be purchased in a conventional form, and it may be downloaded as a single PDF from www.bitsbook.com.
According to this brief article on the ASEE eGFI (engineering Go-for-it!) web site, police officers in Brazil will be getting sunglasses with built-in facial recognition technology. The glasses analyze faces and match the biometric signature against a database of known criminals or terrorism suspects. The glasses then put a red dot on the image of the suspects face. Other sources of information on this story are here and here
Todd Woody reports in Forbes Magazine about a large scale solar power plant being developed in Nevada. The plant is designed to produce 480,000 MWh of energy per year, which is equivalent to 55 MW of continuous output. The article calls the installation a 110 megawat solar thermal power plant. Millions of gallons of molten salt will be used to store thermal energy captured during the daytime so that the plant can produce electricity around the clock.
The plant design calls for an absorber at the top of a 640 foot tall tower that is surrounded by a field of 17,500 heliostat mirrors. Each mirror moves independently to track the sun and reflect sunlight to the absorber at the top of the tower. The absorber provides the heat source for a steam turbine that produces electricity.
Construction of the plant is made possible by a $737 Million loan guarantee from the federal government. Approximately 500 short term construction jobs will be created during construction, and approximately 50 full time employees will be needed to run the plant.
Large, centralized solar power plants have advantages of efficiency and cost. However, they are still large industrial facilities occupying large land area and requiring substantial material to build and maintain. Locating a centralized power plant in the desert may seem like a no-brainer, but there are environmental consequences to disrupting the fragile desert ecosystem. An article in the Washington Post describes the threat of one such project to desert tortoises.
The purpose of environmental regulation is to control activities that harm the environment. In some cases, these activities have financial benefit to individuals or groups. The balance between the economic benefits and environmental protection are often the subject of political debate and power struggles.
A 2011 article in the Washington Post cites data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that during 2010, 0.3 percent of worker layoffs were attributed to government regulations or interventions, whereas 25 percent of layoffs were caused by a loss in business demand. These estimates were made by executives of the companies that laid off the workers.
The balance between the environment and the economy is complex and easily politicized. The one data set cited here is just one narrow slice of this issue.