Social Structures
Author: Matthew McKenna, PhD Researcher at Maynooth University’s Assisting Living and Learning Institute (ALL) Institute, Research Funded through the Science Foundation of Ireland (SFI) Centre for Research Training in Advanced Networks for Sustainable Societies (ADVANCE CRT)
The Science Foundation of Ireland (SFI) Centre for Research and Training in Advanced Networks for Sustainable Societies (ADVANCE CRT) is a multidisciplinary research project focused on ‘Future Networks and the Internet of Things (IoT) with applications in independent and sustainable living’. ADVANCE CRT aims to fund and train 120 PhD students in four annual cohorts in five partner universities, including Maynooth University, across a multitude of academic disciplines and through engagement and cooperation with industry partners. In the words of the ADVANCE CRT:
‘Our vision is to train the next generation of researchers who will seek solutions to the technical and societal challenges of global hyper-connectivity between large numbers of People and Things’.
ADVANCE CRT supports multi and interdisciplinary research into the technical and social challenges presented by an increasingly connected society in its current form. It draws upon a diverse range of expertise from the student to the supervisory level and investigates these challenges with innovative and solution-oriented aspirations. The project is a relevant and timely conception that is urgently needed in order to identify and address the concerns posed by a rapidly increasing symbiosis between modern society and smart technologies.
Digital technologies have advanced at an exponential rate over the past two decades. They have reshaped the social fabric of humanity and have transformed the global economy into an information and data-driven matrix of algorithmic speculation and transaction. The rapid pace of advancement mirrors a heuristic theoretical rule in computational architecture posited in 1965 by Gordon Moore, an American engineer and co-founder of Intel, that the number of transistors in a dense Integrated Circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. This has facilitated the unprecedented pace at which computational technology has been miniaturized and subsequently integrated and embedded within mainstream society, quickly becoming indispensable as an everyday medium through which modern work, social and private life is experienced.
As time passes, it is clear that humanity is on the cusp of a major change; one where the IoT and computational devices become merged with everyday life and, increasingly, even the corporal self. Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are rapidly expanding platforms in the fields of industry, education, and medical science, among other areas. Rapid automation across a spectrum of economic sectors, primary, secondary, and tertiary, is now complemented by increasingly capable algorithms that can mimic the problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of humans through machine learning processes. The twentieth century has borne witness to a great awakening of the proverbial sleeping giant that comprises IoT, AI, computational technology and their integration in all aspects of society and economy.
Despite the substantial potential for the utility of IoT devices and smart technologies for the common good of humanity, the rapid development and misuse of these technologies has led to uneven progress and a multitude of direct and indirect forms of discrimination throughout society. The breakneck pace of change caused by the swift growth of computational devices within society has precipitated a situation whereby a significant portion of older adults and pre-retirement age persons have experienced exclusion and reduced ability to engage in their social, private, economic and political lives. Having grown up and experienced adulthood in the pre-cyber age, many among older generations have suddenly found it impossible to continue living a familiar pattern of life in the same manner that they have done for decades.
Furthermore, despite the burgeoning possibilities and potential benefits of a connected society that is supported and aided by AI and IoT applications and devices, global and regional economic divisions have thus far meant that many of the positive returns of a connected society have eluded the poorest. This situation could easily worsen in coming years as increased automation leads to widespread jobs losses and a substantially widened skills gap for new positions that emerge as part of the high-tech development trend. It is not improbable that this may exacerbate economic and social tensions within developed countries whilst simultaneously furthering the economic divide between rich and poor nations.
In addition, most modern IoT and AI devices have ‘dual use’ potential; meaning that they can be used for civil as well as military purposes. In a time of increased geopolitical tension and division, authoritarian governments are displaying increasing tendencies to exhibit Orwellian levels of control, indoctrination and surveillance over their respective populations. Ideals of independent living and protection of privacy are evidently unpalatable to such regimes. They represent a perfect example of the power of IoT and AI to restrict the freedoms of entire peoples when such technologies are misused. The UN is warning of a new-age digital ‘Berlin Wall’ in a time when geopolitics and uneven development may result in a small percentage of the global population being able to enjoy their human rights and liberties in a connected society.
Although IoT and AI holds the potential to aid and facilitate independent living for persons with disabilities and for older adults, it also incorporates an inherent risk for increased surveillance, removal of privacy, spreading of false information and for the promotion of political agendas that ultimately preclude individual enjoyment of human rights under international law. Any positive or negative eventuality in this regard ultimately depends on the manner of the development, utility and governance of such technologies as they are integrated into modern societies.
ADVANCE CRT is a crucial instrument for researching, navigating and ameliorating some of the challenges faced by increasingly connected societies and it aims to promote and enhance the positive aspects of a connected community through the incorporation of an ethos of beneficence and empowerment for both the individual and the common good. The project explores ethical and social questions pertaining to the integration of IoT technologies in society and it focuses on the individual rather than the collective, meaning that the human rights and the independence of the person consistently underpins each stage of the research process across the spectrum of academic disciplines.
The industry partnerships fostered through ADVANCE CRT helps to lobby and advocate for the incorporation of a human-rights oriented ethos in the production and utility of IoT and AI devices and applications, alongside smart Assistive Technologies (AT), by large technological firms. ADVANCE CRT aims to meet the challenges posed by a connected society to ensure the ethical and human-rights oriented integration of IoT and AI technologies in society and to bolster cooperation across the civic, public, private and civil domains to protect individual freedom and independence in a modern high-tech society.