IEEE Future Directions
Technology Policy & Ethics
The IEEE Future Directions Newsletter, Technology Policy & Ethics is a bi-monthly digital publication featuring timely technical, policy, ethical, social, governmental, but not political commentary, related to emerging technologies and advancements that are electrical and electronic in nature. Future Directions considers the reflection of technology through the lens of social implications a key tenant as IEEE works to incubate and promote technologies.
This newsletter is actively promoted across IEEE Future Directions Initiatives. Readers of this newsletter include IEEE top to middle-level leadership, policy and technology experts, academicians, scholars, and students.
Technology Policy & Ethics: March 2021
Covid-19 and cloud technologies: All-Cloud IT Operating Model for Pandemic Management, Part 2
Dr. Petar Radanliev and Professor Dave De Roure, Department of Engineering Sciences, University of Oxford, England, UK
The Covid-19 pandemic has overwhelmed healthcare systems globally, but if global technology policy is supportive, Covid-19 could trigger a digital healthcare transformation suitable for the new digital age. Global pandemics require fast and flexible healthcare systems that promote global collaboration. This could be an opportunity to rethink how healthcare systems operate globally. In the process of digital transformation, health tech start-ups are crucial in discovering new solutions, but it also requires a new mind-set. A mind-set where transformation from capital-intensive IT operations evolves into flexible, low-asset, all-cloud digital IT operations. In this article, we analyze new opportunities of cloud technologies for Covid-19 health tech start-ups.
Psybersecurity: A New Emerging Topic and Research Area Within Human Security – Part 1
Carlee Franklin and Ankur Chattopadhyay, Northern Kentucky University
With the rise of technology in every facet of daily life, the increased conveniences come with multiple security risks. When imagining cybersecurity, the focus is generally on the protection of personal information, and the technology that stores this information. However, cyber-attacks can come in multiple forms. The term psybersecurity refers to the subject of securing the mental health, including protection of the human psychological wellbeing from the psychiatric consequences of technology usage, and studying the mental health attack surface plus vectors within the field of human security [1, 6]. With 1,473 reported cybersecurity breaches and over 164.68 million sensitive records exposed in the United States alone [2], the aftermath of these attacks extends beyond the technical repercussions.
Pertaining to the human wellbeing aspect, these incidents also translate into psybersecurity attacks that can seriously affect the mental health by bringing about changes in the mental setup, including mood, emotion, and behavior [4]. Given that the attack surface in psybersecurity is primarily the human mind, this makes the impact of psybersecurity attacks quite significant. Within the domain of human security, psybersecurity is an emerging topic. It has plenty of scope for future work, as there has not been much research in this area.
Building the Next Generation Technology Workforce
Dr. Adriana Bankston, Chief Outreach Officer at the Journal of Science Policy & Governance (JSPG)
As various forms of journalism are being changed by new technologies and communication platforms, investors such as Gannett [2] have stepped in to utilize current technologies in order to centralize content, shrink costs to a minimum, and where possible, stream content delivery over the Internet.
It may be too late to fix the major components of local, regional, national, and global information delivery as they have been fragmented to a point of no return. However, it is time to start a new process— envisioning and then implementing information delivery for the future. As an added benefit, this may enhance entertainment delivery methods, which coincides with news delivery.
Technology Policy and Ethics Editorial Board