Failure Of Technology Research Articles

The induction effect: why the rebound effect is only half the story of technology's failure to achieve sustainability

The concept of the rebound effect is important in understanding the limits to how much technological efficiency improvements can reduce energy and resource consumption. However, due to the concept's focus on efficiency, it neglects other environmental implications of technological change. We use the term “induction effect” to grasp additional important mechanisms stemming from new technologies. We define an induction effect as an increase in the level of energy or resource consumption that was caused or enabled by the emergence of “new options” arising from technological change. Our investigation of three cases of new technologies - online consumption, smart homes, and pace of life - shows how including both rebound and induction effects into the analysis helps in understanding the relationship between technological change and energy and resource consumption. Integrating induction effects into the analysis underpins the importance of sufficiency as a strategy for sustainability and helps to develop comprehensive policy measures.

Automated Emotion Recognition in the Workplace: How Proposed Technologies Reveal Potential Futures of Work

Emotion recognition technologies, while critiqued for bias, validity, and privacy invasion, continue to be developed and applied in a range of domains including in high-stakes settings like the workplace. We set out to examine emotion recognition technologies proposed for use in the workplace, describing the input data and training, outputs, and actions that these systems take or prompt. We use these design features to reflect on these technologies' implications using the ethical speculation lens. We analyzed patent applications that developed emotion recognition technologies to be used in the workplace (N=86). We found that these technologies scope data collection broadly; claim to reveal not only targets' emotional expressions, but also their internal states; and take or prompt a wide range of actions, many of which impact workers' employment and livelihoods. Technologies described in patent applications frequently violated existing guidelines for ethical automated emotion recognition technology. We demonstrate the utility of using patent applications for ethical speculation. In doing so, we suggest that 1) increasing the visibility of claimed emotional states has the potential to create additional emotional labor for workers (a burden that is disproportionately distributed to low-power and marginalized workers) and contribute to a larger pattern of blurring boundaries between expectations of the workplace and a worker's autonomy, and more broadly to the data colonialism regime; 2) Emotion recognition technology's failures can be invisible, may inappropriately influence high-stakes workplace decisions and can exacerbate inequity. We discuss the implications of making emotions and emotional data visible in the workplace and submit for consideration implications for designers of emotion recognition, employers who use them, and policymakers.

Smart contracts: a remedial analysis

ABSTRACT The perpetual script of a smart contract, that executes an agreement machine-to-machine without prejudice, guarantees performance of ‘contractual terms’ enabling the exchange or transaction of cryptoassets and other forms of property. Yet, smart contracts as recognisable or valid legal instruments within the boundaries of contract or property law remain uncertain and contentious. Contrary to perceptions of contractual streamlining and efficiency, understanding the uncertainty smart contracts produce lies in the technology's failure to meet many of the fundamental principles of contract law and theory concerning, for example, breach of promise and remedy for breach. Smart contracts appear to reduce contracting to a form and standard well below that developed by contract law and theory over many centuries in both civil and common law jurisdictions. Including elements of the law of restitution, this article's remedial analysis will examine smart contracts considering ‘traditional’ contract law to understand and, where possible, test the legal legitimacy of this post-human technology, and explore the potential of smart contracts to supplement or, in time, supersede traditional contract law.

Winning wars: the triumphs and myths of technology

This paper examines the use of technology in warfare, from the Great War, with its use of artillery, to the War on Terror, with its breakthrough in air and drone power. The use of drones, due to their alleged precision, was meant to be ethical and legal. Strategic bombardment, it was claimed, could win wars. It would also cement the American claim of superiority, hegemony, and power in the war against terrorism. We ask if superior technology can guarantee victory and what that victory would look like, or whether its use can result in such human loss that a military victory becomes unconscionable. After the failure of technology to protect life in the 20th century, what has been achieved in the 21st century War on Terror? What constitutes a triumph and to what extent is that triumph a myth?

Identifying and exploiting human needs for a people centric evolving knowledge society: A case study of Indian ICT Emergence

The introduction of new technologies upon a society prematurely often results in fears of good and bad, especially when no consideration is given to human needs. This situation becomes more acute in circumstances when sophisticated technology from the west claims to satisfy the human needs of a continental and traditional country like India. This paper highlights the new revitalization of Indian society from a socio-economic and cultural point of view and reiterates the possibility of technology's failure to address human needs. A case study of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) emergence in the Indian context is made in order to examine various issues such as the new technological divide syndrome, ICT needs of rural populations, and others.

Identifying and exploiting human needs for a people centric evolving knowledge society: A case study of Indian ICT Emergence

The introduction of new technologies upon a society prematurely often results in fears of good and bad, especially when no consideration is given to human needs. This situation becomes more acute in circumstances when sophisticated technology from the west claims to satisfy the human needs of a continental and traditional country like India. This paper highlights the new revitalization of Indian society from a socio-economic and cultural point of view and reiterates the possibility of technology's failure to address human needs. A case study of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) emergence in the Indian context is made in order to examine various issues such as the new technological divide syndrome, ICT needs of rural populations, and others.