Community and Ethics

The Ethics Behind Your IoT

K.1.105 (La Fontaine)
Molly de Blanc
Internet of Things (IoT) devices are part of the future we were promised. Armed with our mobile devices, we can control everything from our cars to our toasters to the doors of our homes. Along with convenience, IoT devices bring us ethical quandaries, as designers and users. We need to consider the ethical implicates of the technologies we are building and ask ourselves not just about the ways they are being used, for both good and evil, but the potential use cases we might encounter in the future.
IoT devices are becoming increasingly prevalent in our lives -- even my water filter is wifi enabled. In this session, we'll be looking at two case studies of how one might interact with IoT devices, and then consider the ethical implications of these devices, focused on the social impacts they can have on an individual or a society. While we will focus on smart doorbells and smart locks and situations in which installing these could significantly impact quality of life, we will touch on other common IoT devices.

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