IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Spring 2014 - 35

n many respects, information and communication
technologies (ICTs) pose
new challenges to society.
It is worth recognizing what
ICTs represent within the urban
space because of their widespread
use and increasing presence in people's daily lives. ICTs allow new
ways of interaction between citizens and communities and, according to many authors, their use can
improve not only communication
within society, but also public
management as a whole. Their use,
therefore, favors greater social and
economic development.
At the same time, it seems
worth evaluating how such widespread presence of ICTs could in
some cases influence the information flow that supports decisions
and policies - with negative social
impacts if an unethical selection of
information that is generated and
collected leads to biased political
decisions, bringing about greater
inequality and discrimination.
Such scenarios become more
likely and more potentially dangerous as so-called "smart cities" are
increasingly deployed all around
the world.
The aim of this study is to foster discussion on some possible
consequences of the diffusion of
ICTs and their underlying telecommunications infrastructure in the
form of smart cities, and to propose
some initial elements of an ethical
framework to address the irreversible "ICTization" of our societies.

Technological Environment
The present generation of engineering students seems to ignore the
processes that created our technological world, especially related to
its communication dynamics. For
example, not all students are aware
of issues such as the digital divide,
a complex problem that goes
beyond merely technical issues and
involves knowing how different
users and social groups understand
the information accessed through

ICTs, in ways that make sense in
their specific contexts.
The very role of technology in
contemporary societies is worth
discussing. postman [1] proposes a
classification of cultures and their
technologies into three categories.
In the first one, cultures make use
of technology only as a basic tool -
subject to the jurisdiction of social
values and religious systems - in a
culturally integrated way that does
not impose contradictions in the
worldviews of those societies.
In a second category, cultures
function as technocracies in which
the adopted tools modify the cultural reality and defy or threaten
social customs, myths, politics, and
religion. Finally, a third category
includes the technopoly, which
results from an understanding that
social progress only comes from the
human ability to apply knowledge
to create inventions. Inventing, in
the sense of creating new technologies, means changing the world for
the better, and this is an irrefutable
certainty. Such a significant change
undervalues the traditions of social
and symbolic worlds, making them
invisible and irrelevant.
In this context, one of the basic
principles that characterize the
technopoly is the absolute need to
have access to any information,
whenever and wherever necessary.
Such certainty is considered one of
the main factors of progress.
Of course, many discoveries
whose applications have been very
useful to society have resulted in
services that led to their increasing integration into people's lives.
They have then evolved from this
initial phase of simple convenience and became necessities. For
instance, the development of telecommunications, a key element of
ICTs, stands out a process in which
technology takes precedence and
becomes increasingly essential.
Throughout the twentieth century,
as ribeiro [2] remarks, telecommunications entered our social
and economic lives, initially as

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

SprING 2014

something useful but not essential
until eventually the benefits they
brought became inextricably integrated into the fabric of our societies, to the level as we know today
in which everything depends on
its presence.

Communication Systems
Build the Modern World
The telecommunications revolution
in all its aspects (television, radio,
telephony, and data communication systems) connects the world
and its different cultures. Its presence enables the technocracy and
causes changes in various societies and cultures, bringing about
the so-called "global village." In
combination with the computer,
another powerful invention, these
two technologies renewed and
reinforced each other. rapidly, the
digital world was integrated to the
telecommunications infrastructure,
eliminating the intrinsic differences
of legacy systems and established
the basic premise of the digitization
and convergence of different types
of communication structures.
Finally, intelligent and distributed systems, in their many levels,
completed the scenario with all the
conditions required for the establishment of the technopoly.
rosa [3] points out that we are
indeed living today the technological revolution centered on information and telecommunications.
Thus, ICTs became a parameter
for life in society. In addition, postman [1] warns that the technopoly
is reductionist in its goals, limiting
discussion to efficiency and effectiveness, eventually leading to a
loss of focus on the social reality
that generated these very informational structures.

ICTs Made Available
in a Ubiquitous Manner
The current scenario in which
telecommunications services are
formed of different network structures creates the conditions for the
emergence of the Next Generation
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Spring 2014