Call for Papers
Special Issue of IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society
After Covid-19: Crises, Ethics, and Socio-Technical Change
Confirmed Guest Editors
Rafael A. Calvo, Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London
Sebastian Deterding, Digital Creativity Labs, University of York
Catherine Flick, Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility, De Montfort
University
Christoph Luetge, Institute for Ethics in AI, Technical University of Munich
(TUM)
Alison Powell, Department of Media and Communications, London School of
Economics and Political Science
Jack Stilgoe, Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College
London
Karina Vold, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and
Technology, University of Toronto & University of Cambridge
Description
As the COVID-19 pandemic shows, crises can catalyse socio-technical changes at
a speed and scale otherwise thought impossible. Crises expose the fragility and
resilience of our sociotechnical systems – from healthcare to financial
markets, internet connectivity, and local communities. Their urgent peril can
rush through radical measures, such as states globally rolling out digital
contact tracing applications. Crises can accelerate technological trends like
the virtualisation of work, commerce, education, and communing, and
dramatically reshape markets, threatening economic incumbents and creating new
opportunities for innovation and profiteering alike. Thus, we currently see
physical retailers and entertainment venues defaulting, while online retail and
streaming companies thrive and stores, artists, and manufacturers desperately
trial new digitally enabled services and new forms of financing, production,
and delivery. Technology companies and scientists are rapidly developing new
technologies to respond to the pandemic, from 3D-printing medical devices to
data and AI-driven symptom tracking and immunity certification, while
struggling to counter tides of unvetted, potentially harmful medical advice,
opinion, and cures.
In parallel, ongoing crises like COVID-19 often dramatically
reshape political and public demands on science. Standard forms of scientific
inquiry, responsible innovation, and technology ethics emphasise slowness,
deliberation, critique, long-term anticipation and preparedness, and systematic
accumulation and vetting of evidence. In contrast, in periods of crisis,
policy-makers and media publics require concrete, real-time decision guidance
and interventions from researchers that are at odds with the standard practices
of science as well as research and technology ethics. This has led some
researchers to suggest their own discipline may not be ‘crisis-ready’.
Finally, many of the dramatic and sudden adaptations to a crisis are bound to
stay with us. “After 9/11” has become a marker for a new epoch of pervasive
socio-technical regimes of surveillance that were considered exceptional and
temporary when introduced. Similarly, many of today’s ad-hoc responses will
become historical path dependencies for a new era “after COVID-19”.
Catalysing rapid change; reshaping demands on science, technology,
and their regulation; locking in future socio-technical regimes: All these
factors make it crucial for researchers and technologists to consider the
societal impacts of new technologies and socio-technical changes that respond
to COVID-19. But they also invite us to better understand how crises impact
socio-technical change, and how we can develop forms of science and technology
ethics and regulation that fit the needs and demands of crises.
To this end, this special issue aims to bring together researchers from
different disciplines exploring the intersections of technology, ethics, and
COVID-19 as an exemplary crisis.
Topics
Submissions are especially invited on but not limited to the following topics
intersecting with COVID-19 and crises:
· Responsible innovation and science and technology ethics
· Science and technology policy, regulation, and governance
· Public understanding of and engagement with science and technology
· Innovation processes
· Health surveillance, privacy, and data protection
· Algorithmic and technological biases and inequalities
· Impacts of technologies during social isolation
· Impacts of technologies on healthcare and key support workers
· 3D printing and medical devices
· Future Mobility
· Data/AI-driven health and social control technologies
· Virtual/remote work, education, and leisure
Submissions that will be considered out of scope include:
· Work that does not touch ethical or societal impacts of science and
technology
· Clinical research where a medical journal would be more appropriate
How to Submit
For article formats, templates, and submission information, see
https://technologyandsociety.org/transactions/.
Submit your papers through https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tts.
Important dates
· Submissions open: 1 June 2020
· Submissions close: 1 March 2021
· Inclusion in special issue closes: 1 June 2021
· Publication of final issue: Sept 2021
Review and publication process
Papers will be reviewed and published online first upon acceptance on a rolling
basis.
Submitted papers will be reviewed by two guest editors for desk rejection or
acceptance to full review within one week of submission.
Papers accepted for full review will be reviewed by two anonymous reviewers and
a meta-reviewer, with a target turnaround of three weeks for a review decision.
To be considered for the special issue, revisions of papers that are
revise-and-resubmit or accepted with minor/major changes need to be submitted
on or before 1 June 2021. Should they require a further cycle of revision or be
submitted after 1 June 2021, they will be included in a future regular issue of
the Transactions.
---
Karina Vold, PhD.
Research Associate, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence
Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge
www.kkvd.com
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