Information Workshops II: Unanticipated Consequences of IT (Winter)

Section Description

Every IT artifact has a dual impact on individuals, organizations, and societies. The first category of impacts is always predicted by technology developers and adopters, and these usually serve as a justification for IT implementation and use. Examples include increased effectiveness, efficiency, productivity, entertainment, and quality of life. In contrast, the second type of impacts is never envisioned, but these unanticipated impacts may result in a multitude of negative consequences for various stakeholders. Examples of individual-level consequences include privacy violation, technology addiction, physical and mental health issues, cyberbullying, cyberslacking, negative user behavior, technology-family conflict, identity distortion, and skills deterioration. Instances of organizational-level consequences pertain to IT use-related employee stress (i.e., technostress), strain, information overload, work overload, work-family conflict, diminished productivity, innovation and well-being, and work interruptions. Examples of societal-level burdens pertain to election and public opinion influence, fake news, freedom of speech in social media, negative and misleading social advertising, cyber-terrorism, public safety, changes in social norms, and various ethical issues. It is critical to identify, understand, control, and hopefully minimize the negative unanticipated consequences of IT which result from the exponentially increasing ubiquity and power of intelligent machines and humans’ dependence on them. At the same time, some unanticipated consequences may be positive; whereas these were not envisioned by technology developers, they, nevStudentertheless, accidentally appear and make a positive impact on various stakeholders.

The primary purpose of this workshop is to help students identify the negative unanticipated consequences of IT at the individual, organizational, and societal levels, to understand their cause, to predict their future direction, and to develop proactive measures to mitigate and hopefully eliminate their harmful effects. The secondary goal is to help students understand the driving force behind the positive unanticipated consequences of IT in order to recognize, predict, and enhance them.

Current Timetable