Society as Technology
Abstract In this keynote, Katina Michael explores both life-sustaining and life-enhancing technologies in the context of human-machine communication configurations. She reveals key patterns prevalent in the cyborg selection environment, presenting trends in the co-production of human and machine. Katina provides case studies on how humancentric implantables have, and will continue to change our lives. The fundamental dilemma for each person will be whether to opt-in to the new possibilities without the full-knowledge of the long-term individual and societal risks. The concept of a cyborg is used to distill the increasingly blurred boundaries between human and machine, asking the penultimate rhetorical question: what does it mean to be human any longer?
Katina Michael
Katina Michael BIT, MTransCrimPrev, PhD (Senior Member IEEE) is a Professor with Arizona State University and a Senior Global Futures Scientist with the Global Futures Laboratory. At ASU, she has a joint appointment with the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence. Katina’s research focuses on the social implications of emerging technologies. She is the Director of the Society Policy Engineering Collective (SPEC), the founding editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society, and the founding chair of the inaugural Masters of Science in Public Interest Technology. Prior to academia, Katina was employed by Nortel Networks, Andersen Consulting, and OTIS Elevator Company, and is presently an ethical legal and social issues (ELSI) panelist for DARPA, and long-standing board member of the Australian Privacy Foundation. She holds an honorary professorial appointment in the Faculty of Business and Law at the University of Wollongong Australia, her alma mater, where she was also the Associate Dean International of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences.