MELBOURNE — Engineers cannot ignore the social impact of their work and must take responsibility for it, Monash University professor Don Schauder told 45 engineers and others attending the first Australian meeting of the Society on the Social Implications of Technology on July 18.
SSIT is part of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, a US-based volunteer organisation with 365,000 members internationally. Over the past year, the IEEE has successfully fought a US government ban on publishing research papers from members in Cuba, Iran and other countries.
Areas of focus for the new SSIT chapter in Australia are technology and the environment, technology and development, technology usage, ethics training for engineering undergraduates, technology and privacy, and technology access. For more information visit <http://www.ieeevic.org/chapters/ssit>.
Greg Harris
From Green Left Weekly, July 26, 2006.
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