Vol. II: Shaping Information and Communication ... - IMA,ZLW & IfU

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To include ethics into the education on all levels (especially in engineering)
4. Conclusions: The Human-Centredness of Information Technology
To draw the conclusions from these different facets of information and communication
developments, we may quote Marc Luyckx, the former member of the Forward Study Unit of
the European Commission, from the Conference on Enterprise Cultures and Innovation in the
Information Society, organised by the EU-India Cross-Cultural Innovation Network, Brighton,
1999. On this occasion, he put the experiences reported so far into the following words:
“Human society is inextricably engaged in a far reaching transition to an
information based economy. This is inherently a global phenomenon which is both
making and shaping the way societies perceive and respond to the major policy
challenges facing them. It offers mankind immense possibilities but the only and
evident certainty is that it is changing profoundly social and individual behaviour,
expectations and options. It is creating a new era where immaterial knowledge
becomes the key determinant of economic well being. The value of capital is
increasingly based on access to knowledge not labour. The pressure to continuously
acquire new skills in order to remain economically active has never been greater.“
(Luyckx, 1999)
We may rely, however, on the momentum and dynamics of human society as Cooley
confirmed at the same Conference of the EU-India Cross-Cultural Innovation Network:
“One of the most precious assets any society has is the skill, ingenuity and
creativity of its people.”(Cooley, 2000)
Acknowledgement
An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the Professional Congress on Information
and Communication during the World Engineers` Convention, Hannover, Germany, 19.-21.6.
2000. The Convention was organised by the Association of Engineers (VDI). This chapter
integrates the views and contributions of both the International Programme Committee and
the participants of the Congress, as well as its web-based Discussion Group, specifically the
contributions of the members of the EU-India Cross-Cultural Innovation Network.
Furthermore it refers to the work of the Committee on Social Impact of Automation within the
International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC). A different version of this chapter was
recently published in the Journal AI&Society, Vol. 16, No 3, p 210-223.
References