Ethics of smart cities: Towards value-sensitive design and co-evolving city life

The digital revolution has brought about many societal changes such as the creation of “smart cities”. The smart city concept has changed the urban ecosystem by embedding digital technologies in the city fabric to enhance the quality of life of its inhabitants. However, it has also led to some pressing issues and challenges related to data,...

Introducing participatory fairness in emergency communication can support self-organization for survival

Participatory resilience of disaster-struck communities requires reliable communication for self-organized rescue, as conventional communication infrastructure is damaged. Disasters often lead to blackouts preventing citizens from charging their phones, leading to disparity in battery charges and a digital divide in communication...

Random Deviations Improve Micro–Macro Predictions: An Empirical Test

Many sociological theories make critically different macropredictions when their microassumptions are implemented stochastically rather than deterministically. Deviations from individuals’ behavioral patterns described by microtheories can spark cascades that change macrooutcomes, even when deviations are rare and random. With two experiments...

Give more data, awareness and control to individual citizens, and they will help COVID-19 containment

The rapid dynamics of COVID-19 calls for quick and effective tracking of virus transmission chains and early detection of outbreaks, especially in the “phase 2” of the pandemic, when lockdown and other restriction measures are progressively withdrawn, in order to avoid or minimize contagion resurgence. For this purpose, contact-tracing apps...

From remote-controlled to self-controlled citizens

The digital revolution will make data abundant and cheap. Moving from a time of darkness into a digital age with information overload, we will need suitable filters. However, those who build these filters will determine what we see. This creates possibilities to influence people's decisions such that they become remotely controlled rather...

FuturICT – The road towards ethical ICT

The pervasive use of information and communication technology (ICT) in modern societies enables countless opportunities for individuals, institutions, businesses and scientists, but also raises difficult ethical and social problems. In particular, ICT helped to make societies more complex and thus harder to understand, which impedes social and...

Socio-inspired ICT: Towards a socially grounded society-ICT symbiosis

Modern ICT (Information and Communication Technology) has developed a vision where the “computer” is no longer associated with the concept of a single device or a network of devices, but rather the entirety of situated services originating in a digital world, which are perceived through the physical world. It is observed that services with...