[Air-L] Fwd: IFIP-HCC9 Human Choice and Computers (WCC)

[jeremy hunsinger]

9th IFIP Human Choice and Computers International Conference
(IFIP-TC9-HCC9)

Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre
20-23 September 2010, Brisbane, Australia www.wcc2010.org

HCC is the flagship Conference of TC9. A short summary of the eight  
previous conferences and the list of their Proceedings can be found on  
the TC9 website at: http://www.ifiptc9.org/

HCC9 is divided into 4 main tracks:
1. Ethics and ICT Governance
2. Virtual Technologies and Social Shaping
3. Surveillance and Privacy
4. ICT and Sustainable Development

Each of them is presented with their possible topics to be developed:

Track 1: Ethics and ICT Governance

Governance is an old word that goes back to Plato. The concept  
disappeared for a while, and was replaced by ideas like government,  
and government policy. Governance has now returned to the scene.  
Today, it focuses on issues like participative democracy and  
transparency. [White Paper, 2001]
The state is no longer a unique partner in regulating systems. Other  
actors take part at the local, regional, national, and international  
levels. New means of regulating scientific, technical, and other  
subsystems, and new ways of communicating, are possible among a  
variety of actors and subsystems.
Internet governance has been a highly debated issue throughout the  
early part of the first decade of the twenty-first century,  
particularly at the World Summit on Information Systems (WSIS), held  
in Geneva in 2003 and in Tunis 2005. The proposal of the Working Group  
on Internet Governance (WGIG) was adopted in Tunis. It put forward a  
multistakeholder approach to Internet governance. [WGIG, 2005]  
Stakeholder engagement has since become increasingly strong.
These debates raised other questions, particularly with regard to the  
role of business as a stakeholder. If the word “government” seems  
familiar, “civil society” and the “private sector” are perhaps less  
well defined. “Civil society” can be defined rather simply in the  
spirit of Habermas, the philosopher. Or, it may be subject to more  
extensive definitions that can open up discussions on precisely which  
kinds of organisations should be among the participants in civil  
society, and the extent to which business, business associations, and  
business systems are or should be involved. [Weerts, 2004; Civil  
Society Centre - LSE, 2007]
Everyone knows that the private sector indicates primarily the  
business sector. Indeed, the business sector is often represented in  
official circles that make decisions about the Internet. Examples  
include the National and International Chamber of Commerce, the Davos  
Economic Forum, and the GBDe (Global Business dialogue on Electronic  
commerce, http://www.gbd-e.org/).
Ethics, and particularly the “Ethics of Computing”, are certainly  
fields worth deepening. IFIP’s SIG9.2.2 has been working in this  
domain for almost 20 years. The group has produced various books and  
monographs on the ethics of computing. Yet it recognises that current  
literature and guidelines could be enhanced and expanded.
The main goal of the HCC9 track on Ethics and ICT Governance is to  
offer a forum to make this new field of the ethics of computing, and  
its research and practice. The track will include papers on these and  
other subjects:

ICT governance: overviewing the research
- Concepts of governance: from theory to practice
- Ethics of computing: concepts and schools
- Ethics and ICT governance
- ICT ethics: governance models
- Research on ICT ethics governance: results of current research

Ethics and ICT governance: evaluating its practice
- Ethical governance: specific challenges
- Ethical governance: new and developing fields of applications  
(eAccessibility, eGovernment, eHealth, eSustainability)
- Gender and Diversity - an ethical issue
- Regulation as an ethical democratic issue of governance
- Evaluation of the effectiveness of current governance policies
- Application of suitable governance arrangements
- Evaluation of viability of suggested governance policies
- Ethical tools for ICT governance

ICT governance: assessing its institutions and technical components
- Internet governance and ICANN
- The Internet Governance Forum (its role, strengths, and limits).
- Challenges posed by the Internet of Things
- Cybersecurity for people and nations
- Technical norms: ipv6, and various protocols

Track 2: Virtual Technologies and Social Shaping

Following on the recent (April 2009) International Working Conference  
of IFIP 9.5 Working Group on Virtuality and Society: "Images of  
Virtuality" at Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece,  
this conference is part of the TC9-HCC9) of the IFIP World Computer  
Congress, in Brisbane, Australia, September 2010 http:// 
www.wcc2010.org/ .
This track will focus on the feedback loops between virtual  
technologies and the social groups who use them, how each shape the  
other and are in turn shaped by them.
Social shaping, the sociology of technology, science studies and other  
approaches of cultural studies to the phenomenon of the information  
society, driven by such classics as those of Bijker and Law and  
Mackenzie and Wajcman from the 1990s, are arguably now ready for a  
fresh look, in the context of virtual environments and global social  
networking and gaming communities. The intervening years have  
additionally seen an explosion of digital and media arts  
interpretations, and explorations of the impact of virtual  
technologies upon society, and the social use of such technologies  
upon their design, and the entrepreneurial trajectories of their  
appearance in the global market.
Virtual technologies, crucially, have moved very decisively from the  
workplace – whether corporate or home office - and into the domestic  
sphere, into our living rooms, playrooms, our kitchens, and our  
bedrooms. Here the relationship between virtual technologies and  
society, and the mutual shaping processes each undergo, are ripe for  
fresh study, insight, and exploration.
The Virtuality and Society Working Group sub-track of the Human Choice  
and Computers track of the World Computer Congress therefore invites  
research and work-in-progress papers that address the choices faced by  
an information society permeated by ubiquitous virtual technologies.

Relevant topics and themes include, but are not limited to:

- Discussing issues of responsive and iterative user-centred design,  
usability, accessibility, and the ‘permanent beta’ of virtual systems
- Discussing the impact of virtual technologies within the domestic  
sphere and the changes to such technologies developed out of use-cases
- Exploring new (e-, or v-) research methodologies and techniques on  
inquiring into social action in the context of virtuality
- Identifying challenging social, ethical, and political issues of  
socialization in virtuality
- Discussing the role of electronic and digital arts and media in the  
shaping of virtual technologies and their uses
- Discussing the role of digital gaming and massive multiplayer role- 
playing games in the shaping of virtual technologies and their uses
- Discussing virtual spaces and the role of place in virtual  
technologies, and how the domestic as well as the work and civic  
spaces of the information society are shaped by, and in turn shape  
such technologies
- Identifying opportunities and challenges for education, governance,  
and entrepreneurship in virtual worlds
- Discussing emerging issues of e-policy and e-quality of life  
specifically implicated by virtual technologies
- Exploring social histories and philosophies that deepen our  
understanding of term virtuality, and of the relationship between  
virtual technologies and society and the mutual shaping processes  
between them.

Track 3: Surveillance and Privacy

New technical and legal developments pose greater and greater privacy  
dilemmas. Governments have in the recent years increasingly  
established and legalised surveillance schemes in form of data  
retention, communication interception or CCTVs for the reason of  
fighting terrorism or serious crimes. Surveillance Monitoring of  
individuals is also a threat in the private sector: Private  
organisations are for instance increasingly using profiling and data  
mining techniques for targeted marketing, analysing customer buying  
predictions or social sorting. Work place monitoring practices allow  
surveillance of employees. Emerging pervasive computing technologies,  
where individuals are usually unaware of a constant data collection  
and processing in their surroundings, will even heighten the problem  
that individuals are effectively losing control over their personal  
spheres. At a global scale, Google Earth and other corporate virtual  
globes may have dramatic consequences for the tracking and sorting of  
individuals. With CCTV, the controlling power of surveillance is in  
few hands. With live, high resolution imagery feeds from space in the  
near future, massive surveillance may soon be available to everybody,  
a development whose consequences we do not yet grasp. New means of  
surveillance are also enabled by social networks, in which individuals  
are publishing many intimate personal details about themselves and  
others. Such social networks are today already frequently analysed by  
employers, marketing industry, law enforcement or social engineering.

The aim of this conference track is to discuss and analyse such  
privacy risks of surveillance for humans and society as well as  
countermeasures for protecting the individuals’ rights to  
informational self-determination from multi-disciplinary perspectives.

We are therefore especially inviting the submissions of papers  
addressing privacy aspects in relation to topics such as (but not  
limited to):
- Surveillance technologies
- Corporate virtual globes (Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth)
- Profiling & data mining
- Ambient Intelligence, RFID
- GPS, Location-Based Services
- Social Network Analysis
- ID cards
- Biometrics
- Data sharing
- Visual surveillance
- Workplace monitoring
- Communication interception
- Data retention
- Anonymity & Pseudonymity
- Privacy-enhancing technologies
- Privacy-enhancing Identity Management

Track 4: ICT and Sustainable Development

Information and Communication Technologies are perceived both as  
enablers of technological and societal change towards sustainable  
development and as drivers of increasing energy and materials  
consumption, thus leading us away from the goal of sustainable  
development.
This conference will therefore include a track of 20 contributions on  
the relationship between ICT and Sustainable Development, entitled  
"Sustain IT", with the aim of reconciling future Information and  
Communication Technologies with sustainable development (SD).
In order to cover the full range of the complex relationship between  
ICT and SD and to stimulate an interdisciplinary discourse on “ICT for  
SD”, we invite herewith researchers working on various aspects of this  
issue to contribute to this WCC10 track. We will break down the issue  
into the following three topics.

ICT hardware and SD

- What are the qualities and quantities of the material and energy  
flows caused by the life cycle of ICT hardware and how can we assess  
their relevance for SD?
- What are the environmental and social implications of electronic  
waste (e-waste) tracks rising in industrialized countries and emerging  
economies?
- What are the environmental and social implications of a growing  
demand for scarce chemical elements as they are increasingly used in  
ICT production?
- What are sound methodologies to assess the energy demand of ICT  
infrastructures and services?
- What innovations are necessary to reduce the life-cycle wide  
material and energy demand of ICT services, e.g. in the field of  
"Green IT"?

ICT applications and SD

- What are the potentials to apply ICT for energy efficiency in  
production and consumption, and what are the conditions for realizing  
these potentials?
- What are the potentials to apply ICT for materials efficiency or  
resource productivity, and what are the conditions for realizing these  
potentials?
- What ICT applications have the potential to contribute to the  
reduction of greenhouse gas emissions or to the adaption to climate  
change?
- Which methodology can be used to assess optimization, substitution  
and induction effects of ICT with regard to resource-intensive  
processes?
- How can we link organizational, regional, national and global  
perspectives in using ICT to support SD?
- What is the relationship between “ICT for development” and “ICT for  
sustainable development”?

ICT-enabled structural change towards SD

- What is the role of ICT in sustainable production and consumption,  
resource productivity or economic dematerialization (decoupling total  
material consumption from GDP)?
- How can we better understand rebound effects of ICT-induced  
efficiency gains and under what conditions can they be avoided?
- What is the relationship between conceptions of the “the information  
society” and SD?
- Is ICT going to bring about a “third industrial revolution”, and how  
is this perspective related to SD?
- What economic frameworks and conditions, including trade and tax  
regimes, are needed to enable ICT-supported structural change towards  
SD?
- What is the relationship between ICT, GDP growth and measures of  
progress beyond GDP (human development indicator, indicators for  
wellbeing, quality of life or happiness)?
- What are the most relevant research questions in sustainability  
science regarding the role of ICT?


Programme Committee Chairs


HCC9 Chairs:
Jacques Berleur, Namur University, Belgium
Magda Hercheui, Westminster Business School and London School of  
Economics, United Kingdom

Track 1: Ethics and ICT Governance
Jacques Berleur, Namur University, Belgium
Philippe Goujon, Namur University, Belgium
Diane Whitehouse, The Castlegate Consultancy, UK

Track 2: Virtual Technologies and Social Shaping
David Kreps, Salford Business School, Salford University, UK
Martin Warnke, Computer Science & Culture, Leuphana University,  
Lueneburg, Deutschland.
Claus Pias, University of Vienna, Austria

Track 3: Surveillance and Privacy
Simone Fischer-Hübner, Karlstad University, Yola Georgiadou,  
International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth  
Observation (ITC)
Track 4: ICT and Sustainable Development
Lorenz M. Hilty, Empa, Switzerland
Magda Hercheui, Westminster Business School and London School of  
Economics, United Kingdom


<snipped big list o'names>

Instructions for paper submission

Papers must not substantially overlap with papers that have been  
published or are simultaneously submitted to a journal or another  
conference with proceedings. Papers must be written in English; they  
should be at most 10-12 pages in total, including bibliography and  
well-marked appendices. Papers should be intelligible without  
appendices, if any.

Accepted papers will be presented at the conference and published in  
the IFIP Series by Springer. Submitted and accepted papers must follow  
the publisher’s guidelines for the IFIP Series (www.springer.com/series/6102 
), author templates, and manuscript preparation in Word). At least one  
author of each accepted paper must register to the conference and  
present the paper.

All papers must be submitted in electronic form (Word documents) to  
Jacques Berleur and Magda Hercheui (for both emails below necessarily,  
not only one email) and the track chairs by the deadline indicated  
below. Papers submitted after this deadline will be discarded without  
review. Make clear the track you are submitting your paper to avoid  
delays of your paper (inform the track on the email subject).

Important dates
Intention to submit: By return of mail (optional)
Submission of papers: January 31, 2010
Notification to authors: April 20, 2010
Camera-ready copies: May 15, 2010

Intention to submit and submission must be sent to the two HCC9 IPC  
Chairs, and according to your track choice to the track chairs:
HCC9 chairs
Jacques Berleur, Namur University, Belgium: jberleur at info.fundp.ac.be
Magda Hercheui, Westminster Business School and London School of  
Economics, United Kingdom
m.hercheui at googlemail.com

Track 1: Ethics and ICT Governance
Jacques Berleur, Namur University, Belgium: jberleur at info.fundp.ac.be
Philippe Goujon, Namur University, Belgium, philippe.goujon at fundp.ac.be,
Diane Whitehouse, The Castlegate Consultancy, UK
dewhitehouse at googlemail.com

Track 2: Virtual Technologies and Social Shaping
David Kreps, Salford Business School, Salford University, UK, d.g.kreps at salford.ac.uk
Martin Warnke, Computer Science & Culture, Leuphana University,  
Lueneburg, Deutschland, warnke at leuphana.de
Claus Pias, University of Vienna, Austria
claus.pias at media-theory.com

Track 3: Surveillance and Privacy
Simone Fischer-Hübner, Karlstad University, simone.fischer-huebner at kau.se
Yola Georgiadou, ICT, International Institute for Geo-information  
Science and Earth Observation (ITC), georgiadou at itc.nl

Track 4: ICT and Sustainable Development
Lorenz M. Hilty, Empa, Switzerland Lorenz.Hilty at empa.ch
Magda Hercheui, Westminster Business School and London School of  
Economics, United Kingdom
m.hercheui at googlemail.com

Important updated information
Please, see updated information about the HCC 9 in both links below  
(including submission process):

http://www.wcc2010.com/HCC92010/index.html

http://www.ifiptc9.org/ForthcomingEvent.html