IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2021 - 4

President's Message
President's Message
If a Colleague Asks: " Will my Innovation
Have Unintended Consequences? "
Clinton J. Andrews
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 USA
 We love to talk about the unintended consequences
of others' technological innovations. We
document the air pollution and traffic congestion
accompanying automobile dependence, the surrender
of personal privacy in order to gain online
convenience, and the political violence abetted
by social media algorithms optimized to generate
advertising revenue.
Unintended consequences are intrinsic to the
human condition, as Shakespeare's Puck delights to
remind us. Unintended consequences are frequently
objects of systematic inquiry. Merton, in 1936, notes
that unanticipated consequences can be positive
or negative, and identifies ignorance, error, willful
ignorance, paradoxical values, and self-defeating
predictions as key sources [1]. Luft and Ingham,
in 1955, tell us to think relationally about what is
known and unknown to us and others, in order to
distinguish among blind spots, hidden features,
and truly unknown unknowns [2]. Morgan and
Henrion, in 1990, distinguish among statistical variation,
subjective judgment, linguistic imprecision,
variability, inherent randomness, disagreement,
and approximation as sources of uncertainty about
consequences [3]. Stirling, in 2010, asserts that both
outcomes and likelihoods may be problematic, thus
contrasting risk, uncertainty, ambiguity, and ignorance
[4]. Even the Harvard Business Review joins
the fun, in 2021, directing managers to " elevate consideration
of unintended consequences from the
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2021.3077045
Date of current version: 3 June 2021.
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outset, orient corporate governance around mitigating
unintended consequences, and partner with regulators
to create accountability " [5].
Founders of the IEEE Society on Social Implications
of Technology (SSIT) explicitly addressed
unintended consequences of technological development.
The first issue of the newsletter that evolved
into this magazine sought, in 1972, better means for
" predicting and evaluating the impact of technology
on society " [6]. The magazine has since published
many such articles, for example, when a 2016 issue
devoted its cover story to the important distinction
between unintended and unanticipated consequences
[7].
Unintended consequences of technological
development matter in practice and thus are not
just of academic interest. Practicing engineers and
scientists are the ones who make the technological
changes that impact the real world. They also receive
the blowback when things do not go as planned.
SSIT would do well to spark constructive and practical
discussion about managing unintended consequences.
We are already doing much intellectual
work in this space, but we can do more to connect
with practice. Here are a few ideas.
* SSIT chapters provide powerful platforms for
connecting with practitioners and students.
Thoughtful volunteers could organize local conversations
about salient examples of unintended
consequences.
* SSIT Distinguished Lecturers could virtually visit
chapter and section meetings to share insights
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2021

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