IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021 - 12

Guest Editors' Introduction
There were 210 abstracts, short papers, and longer
peer-reviewed papers accepted into the ISTAS Conference
Proceedings, representing over 400 authors
from 27 countries [23].
It was indeed the largest ever ISTAS held, with the
greatest number of registrations. We are grateful for
the support of student registrations by IEEE's Humanitarian
Activities Committee (HAC) 2020 Grant, in
addition to the scores of volunteers, keynotes, invited
speakers, reviewers, and committees over the four
parallel tracks. We would particularly like to thank
the students from the Innovation in Global Development
(IGD) Ph.D. program at the SFIS at ASU, in
addition to the student volunteers in the Society Policy
Engineering Collective (SPEC) who gave up their
time to contribute to the success of the event. There
were two outstanding personnel who supported us
during the symposium and over a weekend and we
thank them especially for the event's logistics and
preparation, Cindy Dick and Melissa Waite of SFIS.
We are indebted to all who showed such grace by
their presence.
For us, highlights included special panels on a
variety of themes including co-located panels-
Designing Without the - Isms: How Tech Inclusion
Benefits Society (with IEEE TechEthics), and panels
on Embedding Humanistic Values in STEM, Social
and Environmental Justice, Graduate Student-Led
PIT, Best Practices in PIT, and Age Appropriate Published
Terms for Children, among many other memorable
sessions on global development, humanitarian
challenges, future technologies such as AI and brain
implants, professional practice in industry, a
hands-on workshop on building a SolarSPELL, several
live radio shows and interviews, undergraduate
case studies, autoethnographic life stories, socio-legal
scholarship, and more.
We have included a diverse mix of articles in this
Special Issue in the form of opinion pieces, leading
edge pieces, commentaries, and peer-reviewed
papers. We are very proud of this volume that incorporates
both early career researcher voices and more
established researchers and international research
teams, with a purposeful diversity of representation.
A number of themes emerged from the published
authors, including technological responses
to COVID-19 and their corresponding benefits and
shortcomings, the promises and perils of digital
transformation, themes related to care, liberation,
12
and stewardship, and key contributions to values by
design, sustainability, and rural communities.
ISTAS20 outcomes
This is the second of three special issues published
stemming from collaborations at ISTAS20,
the first was published in the IEEE TransacTIons on
TEchnology and socIETy (IEEE TTs) on the theme of
" Socio-Technical Design for Public Interest Technology "
(June 2021) by Abbas et al., this special
on " Co-designing the Future with Public Interest
Technology " , and the third in IEEE TTS on " Anticipating
Techno-Economic Fallout: Purpose-Driven
Socio-technical
Innovation "
(September
2021).
The three specials serve to: 1) identify the need to
go beyond technologies and consider evolving
socio-technical systems and ecosystems in view of
appropriate and enhanced design methodologies;
2) convey an approach known as socio-technical
co-design whereby diverse stakeholders are considered
in the design process toward a common
framing for public community-based causes; and 3)
provide a means of understanding and anticipating
techno-economic fallout and overcoming those
pitfalls of unintended consequences by focusing on
purpose-driven socio-technical innovation.
Are you interested in PIT?
PIT programs are designed to train tomorrow's
leaders to imagine, design, create, and apply technology
for the advancement of the social good. A
list of relevant PIT degrees at the undergraduate,
postgraduate, and higher degree research levels
is maintained by PIT advocate, Schneier [24], and
shortly a PIT degree database will be made available
on New America's website. These programs " seek
to equip individuals to assess new and emerging
technologies, engage with community stakeholders,
identify issues that are of public interest to communities,
find a public consensus and deploy technologies
that will benefit humanity " [25]. The Public
Interest Technology - University Network (PIT-UN)
has been instrumental in bringing together 36 American-based
universities to join their network in a bid
to raise awareness about the importance of PIT [26].
The network is set to go global in the coming year.
Many of the authors participating in ISTAS20 were
from member institutions. Together with the Director
of PIT-UN, Andreen Soley, Katina Michael, and Roba
Abbas co-organized the Day Two event where IEEE
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