SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP


The Community Affairs Board of the Australian Computer Society has set up a Task Force with the aim of assessing the human implications of specific information technologies.

The first responsibility of the Human Implications Task Force (HIT) is to prepare a paper for an international conference to be held in Corfu in May 1997. CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY REVISITED IN THE GLOBAL
INFORMATION SOCIETY

Sponsored and organized by IFIP WG9.2 (with the support of WG9.5)
Practitioners and researchers are invited to join in developing a statement about the future of culture and democracy in a global information society.

Some key questions are:
How can we cope with the sustainability of society if we are unable to understand and anticipate its cultural, social, political, economic and technological developments? What happens to jobs and work-related skills when we face the rapid integration of the different components of information and communication technology (ICT) unaccompanied by vocational retraining? What does it mean for everybody to have access to information when its diffusion is shaped in a mono-cultural way? How can people remain in control of their own development, if it is not deeply rooted in their own culture? What is the significance of technological developments which do not meet the human needs of society? How is democracy affected by the declining power of political discourse resulting from the increasing power of liberal market driving forces? Are there not specific threats to civil rights from particular technologies and especially from the integration of what were formerly separate technologies?

Themes of the conference comprise issues related to the:

If you would like to be a member of the Task Force and/or would like to make comments about issues of importance to the Corfu conference please email Julie Cameron.

The links below will take you to some related web pages.

Your comments can be emailed to Julie Cameron.