IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2016 - 88

Last Word
Christine Perakslis

hy would ten female
basketball players in
the heat of competition abruptly halt a
match at a university
to scour the floor of the gym for one
lost bobby pin? Because bobby pins
were made of steel, and steel was
crucial to the war effort. Rivaling
factions aligned around a piece of
metal weighing less than an ounce
[1]. During World War II, many Allied
citizens answered a call to align.
Society drove at a gas-saving "victory speed." "Victory gardens" were
cultivated in empty lots and backyards. Neighborhood cooperatives
formed. Cooking fat was delivered
to collection points. Silk stockings
were salvaged. People supposed
that even small, ordinary, individual
contributions could make the difference between victory and defeat for
society [2].
In this issue, our colleagues contended with a broad range of topics
around which we align, as a community committed to addressing
the impact of technology on society.
As we turned the pages, technological impact was addressed from the
macro-level of smart cities to the
micro-level of the subcutaneous of
humans. Our community persists to
wrestle with the longstanding issues

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2016.2601384
Date of publication: 7 September 2016

An Ounce of Steel:
Crucial Alignments
of privacy and trust, yet in ever more
complex systems. We evaluate the
contemporary effects of Tower-ofBabel-like confusion between and
among diverse stakeholders with
competing agendas. We continue to
apply time-honored theories, to analyze and design well, the dynamical
systems of our times.
At ISTAS 2015, and in this Special
Issue, we derived inspiration. We
were reminded that history proves,
yet again, that success is more
probable with coordinated collaborative efforts, as opposed to needless
competition among self-interested
parties [3]. We were encouraged by
the exploration of new frameworks
to address technology ethics for a
world within which devices will augment, as well as restrict, the power
of individuals. We are inspired by
smallholder farmers. Despite such a
limited physical sphere, these entrepreneurs faithfully cultivate land to
yield positive impact on society's
constrained food supply. We envision closing the digital divide, knowIEEE Technology and Society Magazine

ing technologies will better equip
these formidable contributors.
Perhaps ours is a community akin
to the 1940s neighborhood cooperative. We each contribute, even if our
efforts sometimes seem paltry. As
our individual contributions are marshaled together, we stimulate broad
and rich professional dialogue for
the victory of society in our rapidly
transforming world.

Author Information
Christine Perakslis is Associate Professor in the MBA Program, College
of Management, Johnson & Wales
University, Providence, RI. Email:
christine.perakslis@jwu.edu.

References

[1] J. Bradley and R. Powers, Flags of our
Fathers. New York, NY: Bantam, 2000.
[2] Arkansas Educational Television Network, The
Home Front Experience (World War II oral history project), 2010; http://www.intheirwords.
org/the_home_front_experience/the_war_
effort/victory_gardens, accessed Apr. 1, 2016.
[3] B. Peters, How Not to Network a Nation: The
Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 2016.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2016