Technology and Society: Introduction In the halcyon days of technology development, just a few decades ago, advances were greeted with enthusiasm. Everyone expected a better life from new devices: computers, microwaves, and nuclear power, to mention a few. Environmental concerns, global warming, worker displacement, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), energy conservation, and globalization were not on…

If you enjoy science fiction, as I do, you know that it’s replete with visions of worlds enabled by technology, both utopian and dystopian. A world without hunger or disease on the one hand to one reduced to a post-apocalyptic state by nuclear, biological, or cyber warfare or by a “technological singularity” (where, e.g., the…