IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2015 - 4
president's message
Greg Adamson
ech nolo g ist s a re
problem solvers. We
work out answers
to questions (sometimes simple, sometimes difficult), and apply these to
the world. But what sort of world
do we live in? For more than a
century we have known that this
isn't the deterministic world of Sir
Isaac Newton. It isn't a mechanical
world in which each part moves in
lock step with each other part. Our
world is statistical.
IEEE-SSIT is concerned with the
context of technology, including
unexpected consequences. Some
consequences are unexpected
because the team working on the
technology simply isn't aware of the
possibility of those consequences
(this is why multi-disciplinary teams
are so important). To paraphrase
Henri Poincare, in deterministic
systems a small change in a cause
yields only a small change in the
result, while in a statistical system
a small change can yield a result of
any finite size.
I came across this reference while reading a 1924 article
"Thoughts on earthquakes" by Torahiko Terada (1878-1935), a Japanese physicist, poet, and author, an
T
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2015.2425614
Date of publication: 19 June 2015
4
Deterministic and
Statistical Worlds
early pioneer of earthquake studies
and the father of nonlinear physics
in Japan (Enjoying Torahiko in English, Tom Gulley (trans.) 2013). Terada's writings intrigue me, because
he asks how society can prepare for
unexpected events. His approach is
scientifically informed, locally specific, socially aware, multi-disciplinary,
and multi-focussed in its solutions.
Terada uses a metaphor for
addressing the unexpected: "Night
comes every 24 hours, so it's no
problem. But imagine what would
happen if night fell suddenly, at
irregular intervals, only once every
50 years or so. Indescribable chaos
would likely occur, perhaps accompanied by heavy losses of life and
property."
Terada's insights remind me of
two other 20th century researchers, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis
and Norbert Wiener. These three
researchers all contributed signifi-
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
cantly to the technology and society
field. By establishing the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata, Mahalanobis laid the basis for the role
that IT has played in India's development. Wiener, founder of cybernetics (the "cyber" in everything) is
considered the co-founder of information ethics for his 1947 statement, "A scientist rebels."
Technical discovery has a notoriously short timeframe. Smartphones can have a shelf-life of
months or even weeks. Yet many of
the key discoveries in the technology and society field of the past
100 years are still to be applied.
Author Information
Greg Adamson, 2015 IEEE -SSIT
President, is with the School
of Eng ineer ing , Universit y of
Melbou r ne, Au st ra l ia. E ma i l:
g.adamson@ieee.org.
∕
june 2015
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