Social digitization

This discussion on social digitization summarizes the important research report “Urgent upgrade: Protect public values in our digitized society” by Kool, Timmer, Royakkers, and van Est (2017) of the Dutch Rathenau Instituut. The report informed the Dutch Senate on the desirability of a committee that can advise on the ethical aspects of the digitization of society. The report confirmed the Senate’s conjecture that digitization is compromising some important values.

This “summary” of Kool et al.’s research report on social digitization, its key technologies, and potential impacts on society, integrated with a discussion of digital transformation in higher education, is taken from a uOttawa PhD thesis (pp. 18-23, 2020) completed at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Faculty of Engineering, on the topic of ethical hacking sociotechnology titled Technoethics and sensemaking: Risk assessment and knowledge management of ethical hacking in a sociotechnical society (thesis advisory committee: uOttawa professors Rocci Luppicini, Liam Peyton, and Andre Vellino).

Social digitization
Digital transformation in higher education

You may also be interested in Canada’s cybersecurity threat landscape.

Kool et al. (2017) argue that the digitization of society has entered a cybernetic phase, thanks to a host of emergent technological innovations in computing and communications together generating a new wave of digitization. The concept of digitization refers to a large cluster of digital technologies such as robotics, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and algorithms, and big data. Artificial intelligence is becoming ubiquitous, increasingly finding its way into more and more software applications, and involves giving computer systems a form of intelligence, such as learning and autonomous decision making, and thus supports a myriad of emerging and disruptive technological innovations (e.g., smart environments, robotics, and network monitoring). “Urgent Upgrade: Protect Public Values in Our Digitized Society” explores the ethical and societal challenges of digitization and the challenges of the governance landscape in the Netherlands. “We investigated which technologies are expected to shape digital society in the coming years, and which social and ethical challenges they will bring” (p. 116). The analysis involved an examination of the role of the scientific community and knowledge institutions, institutions responsible for protecting human rights, civil society, and “the roles of policy makers and politicians in agenda setting, in political decision making, and in the implementation of policy” (p. 11).

The analysis investigated the ethical and social issues that arise in the material, biological, socio-cultural and digital worlds and focused on eight technology areas that “best illustrate a wide range of the impact of the new wave of digitization” (p. 23)–that is, IoT and robotics; biometrics and persuasive technology; digital platforms, augmented reality, virtual reality and social media; and artificial intelligence, algorithms and big data (see Table 2).

Table 2: Technology Areas in The Four Worlds (Kool et al., 2017, p. 45)

Material world	Biological world	Socio-cultural world	Digital world
Robotics	Persuasive technology	Platforms	Artificial intelligence
Internet of Things	Multimodal biometrics	VR/AR and social media	Big data and algorithms

Although “digitization has been going on for decades,” recently it has become “easier to intervene real time in the physical world at an increasingly detailed level.” This “ushered in a new phase in the development of the digital society; a phase in which a cybernetic loop exists between the physical and the digital world” (p. 44). This means,

processes in the physical world are measured, the resulting data is analysed, and then real time intervention takes place based on that data analysis. The impact of the intervention can subsequently be measured, analysed and adjusted, before rejoining the following cybernetic loop cycle. (p. 44)

Kool et al. (2017) see “a return to the so-called ‘cybernetic thinking’ that attracted interest in the 1950s and 1960s.” In cybernetics “biological, social and cognitive processes can be understood in terms of information processes and systems, and thus digitally programmed and controlled” (p. 44). Based on the various phases in the cybernetic loop–collection, analysis, and application–the authors “see various ethical and social issues emerging” related to the development of technology that require attention in the coming years. The new wave of digitization is “leading to a world in which continuous feedback and realtime management and control are increasingly important principles for a range of services.” This exerts “a strain on important public values” such as privacy, equity and equality, autonomy and human dignity. These values are clustered into seven topics (see Table 3: Overview of Ethical and Societal Issues Related to Digitization). Analysis of the scientific literature on technologies revealed several recurring themes – “privacy, autonomy, security, controlling technology, human dignity, equity and inequality, and power relations” (Kool et al., 2017, p. 47).

Table 3: Overview of Ethical and Societal Issues Related to Digitization (Kool et al., 2017, p. 8)

Central topic	Issues
Privacy	Data protection, privacy, mental privacy, spatial privacy, surveillance, function creep
Autonomy	Freedom of choice, freedom of expression, manipulation, paternalism
Safety and security	Information security, identity fraud, physical safety
Control over technology	Control and transparency of algorithms, responsibility, accountability, unpredictability
Human dignity	Dehumanization, instrumentalization, deskilling, desocialization, unemployment
Equity and equality	Discrimination, exclusion, equal treatment, unfair bias, stigmatization
Balances of power	Unfair competition, exploitation, shifting relations consumers and businesses, government and businesses

Kool et al. (2017) argue that while initially digitization processes consisted of “the large-scale collection of data on the physical, biological and social world,” a new wave of digitization characterized by continuous, cybernetic, feedback loops is focused on the large-scale analysis and application of that data. Nowadays “we can analyse this data on a large scale and apply the acquired knowledge directly in the real world” (p. 43). On one hand, real-time intervention and cybernetic (re)directing can be beneficial to society in various sectors–e.g., self-driving cars that update their digital maps through experience (learning). On the other hand, “Take for example social media users’ newsfeeds, which social media companies are now ‘customizing’ based on their monitoring and analysis of these same users’ surfing behaviour” (Kool et al., 2017, p. 25). Surveillance capitalism “commodifies personal clicking behavior” — “it unilaterally claims private human experience as a free source of raw material” (Thompson, 2019). Social media sites are “calibrated” for user engagement and interaction. Surveillance can influence user behavior in complex ways, including unconsciously–hitting either the information security or the political autonomy of citizens. Data surveillance “can unconsciously influence a user’s identity, and lead to ‘filter bubbles’, in which the system only suggests news, information and contacts that match the user’s previous behaviour, choices and interests” (Kool et al., 2017, p. 10).

Kool et al. (2017) conclude that “the far-reaching digitization of society is raising fundamental ethical and societal issues.” Government and society “are not adequately equipped to deal with these issues” (p. 26). The governance system “needs to be upgraded if it is to “safeguard our public values and fundamental rights in the digital age now and in the future.” This upgrading “requires that all parties – government, business and civil society – take action to keep digitization on the right track” (p. 26).

Digital transformation in higher education

“In the context of sweeping social, economic, technological, and demographic changes,” writes EDUCAUSE (2019), digital transformation is “a series of deep and coordinated culture, workforce, and technology shifts that enable new educational and operating models and transform an institution’s operations, strategic directions, and value proposition.” Digital transformation can be understood as a subcategory of social digitalization, itself a form of social (sociotechnical) evolution. These sociotechnical shifts are transforming how businesses and society work. Digital transformation promises new business opportunities and business models that capitalize on the technological infrastructure underlying a new wave of social digitization. Digital transformation is to be studied at the intersection of “culture, workforce, and technology”–or society and technology–especially in light of how citizens in liberal democracies use (or should use) ICTs and social media. A new phase in the development of the digital society rests on self-correcting cybernetic loops operating in real time (real-time monitoring) existing between the physical and the digital worlds, that is, on the hybridization or convergence of the physical and digital worlds (Kool et al., 2017).

AI, 5G, and IoT technologies have created systemic vulnerabilities relating to information security/privacy–especially increased risk of exposure to cybercrime and surveillance. Increasing exposure risk due to increasing interconnectedness (expansion of the attack surface) on an internationalized and globalized ICT network has brought ordinary Canadians to the forefront of the sociopolitical cybersecurity battle. Citizen information security awareness needs to span technical, as well as legal, social and political contexts governing or regulating the use of open hacking technologies. Sociotechnical shifts create a need for IT governance frameworks regarding technology use, political decision making, and protecting social values at stake, notably privacy rights (the information security and political autonomy of individuals).

Two key defining characteristics of the emergent sociotechnical society are: Cybernetic digitization and a knowledge-driven economy. Cybernetic digitization (see Kool et al., 2017) refers to the convergence/hybridization of the digital and physical worlds through continuous, cybernetic feedback loops (real-time monitoring and adaptation). The cybernetic phase of social digitization, that is, the sociotechnical change it imagines, corresponds to an understanding of the Fourth Industrial Revolution as a social transformation involving social, political, cultural, and economic changes unfolding over the 21st century. Building on the ubiquity of digital technologies of the Third Industrial or Digital Revolution, the Fourth Industrial Revolution “will be driven largely by the convergence of digital, biological, and physical innovations” (Schwab, 2018). “It means that processes in the physical world are measured, the resulting data is analysed, and then real time intervention takes place based on that data analysis.” The impact of the intervention “can subsequently be measured, analysed and adjusted, before rejoining the following cybernetic loop cycle” (Kool et al., 2017, p. 43)–that is, surveillance whereby companies track user actions, profiling them, and on that basis show real-time “appropriate” information, products, or prices.

Key references

Kool, L., Timmer, J., Royakkers, L. M. M., & van Est, Q. C. (2017). Urgent upgrade: Protect public values in our digitized society. The Hague, Rathenau Instituut.

Social digitization