Insights into Socio-technical Interactions and Implications - A Discussion

Information and communication technologies have dominant impacts in all spheres of modern life. While these technologies offer the possibility to make the world a richer, more efficient and interactive place, they increase fragility as they reinforce our dependence on such systems. The dependence, in a sense, draws attention to how increasingly, science is a collaborative sport between humans and computers. This in turn highlights a change in social science itself as we transition from qualitative study of small groups of people to quantitative computer-aided study of big data sets created by human-machine interactions. The interactions indicate a kind of intelligence that is different from humans and in a sense urges us to identify new questions. Questions that direct our scientific enquiries into blind spots that our algorithms find for us, and indicate the levels of diversity the teams need to have to address these questions. The complexity of these interactions can never be fully understood, as they evolve continuously, and in this context, the idea of social computing gains relevance. Given the vast implications of ICTs and the impossibility of considering them all, this discussion is limited to the domain of cybersecurity and the related domain of privacy. The discussions are approached through stories that emphasize an ever-increasing and diverse set of threats of the growing complexity of digital ecosystems, and the concerns that it might lead to violation of fundamental values such as equality, fairness, freedom or privacy. It is becoming increasingly evident that applying cybersecurity mechanisms are essential to the protection of digital assets, that could be personal, industrial or commercial. However, such measures may also encroach on individual privacy while potentially exclude individuals from society. Given the background, this paper proposes to trigger a discussion on how technology and society interact on practical levels, and how the impact such interactions have on society could offer a unique perspective on innovation processes.