Marc Rotenberg in Cincinnati March 5, 2010

Here's another good reason to participate in the PAIT workshop: Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), will deliver the keynote address at the APPE annual meeting the day after and in the same hotel as the PAIT workshop. The following is from the APPE Web site:

The keynote speaker for the Nineteenth Annual Meeting will be Marc Rotenberg, the Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, DC.

Marc Rotenberg teaches information privacy law at Georgetown University Law Center and has testified before Congress on many issues, including access to information, encryption policy, consumer protection, computer security, and communications privacy. He testified before the 9-11 Commission on “Security and Liberty: Protecting Privacy, Preventing Terrorism.”

Dr. Rotenberg has served on several national and international advisory panels, including the expert panels on Cryptography Policy and Computer Security for the OECD, the Legal Experts on Cyberspace Law for UNESCO, and the Countering Spam program of the ITU. He currently chairs the ABA Committee on Privacy and Information Protection and is the former Chair of the Public Interest Registry, which manages the .ORG domain. He is editor of Privacy and Human Rights and The Privacy Law Sourcebook, and co-editor (with Daniel J. Solove and Paul Schwartz) of Information Privacy Law (Aspen Publishing 2007).

He is a graduate of Harvard College and Stanford Law School and served as Counsel to Senator Patrick J. Leahy on the Senate Judiciary Committee after graduation from law school. He is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the recipient of several awards including the World Technology Award in Law.

Ken Pimple, PAIT Project Director

Call for Participation

We've issued a Call for Participation for the PAIT workshop. It's available from the PAIT home page, as are our registration form, travel subsidy policy and application, and working definition. Stay tuned for more to come.

Ken Pimple, PAIT Project Director

Ethics and Assistive Technology Survey

Researchers at the University of British Columbia recently posted a survey on Ethics and Assistive Technology Survey. The group's early survey on robot ethics appears still to be open.

From their Web site: "The purpose of the surveys is to facilitate well-informed discussion and explore attitudes about complex issues related to ethics (including animal welfare) and scientific and technological developments."

Thanks to Colin Allen (a member of the PAIT Planning Committee) for bringing these surveys to my attention.

Ken Pimple, PAIT Project Director

Working definition

Comments on and discussion of this working definition are welcome; please use the Comment function. Slight changes made 10/30/2009. - Ken Pimple

The PAIT Planning Committee developed these working definitions to help guide our efforts. They are intended to be useful rather than conclusive.

For the purposes of this workshop, we consider terms such as “pervasive computing,” “ubiquitous computing,” “ubicomp,” “everyware,” “ambient intelligence,” and “ambient computing” to be roughly synonymous. We use the term “information technology” to highlight the important role of hardware not usually associated with computers, such as advanced sensing and communication devices, involved in most pervasive IT. Our shorthand for these technologies and their application is PAIT.

Definition: Pervasive IT devices are small and/or unobtrusive (compared to a desktop computer, for example) and can be embedded in everyday objects (e.g., carpets, clothing, doorways, toys) to collect and/or act upon data generated by or important to human activity. Often the data collected can be wirelessly transmitted, stored, and shared on the Internet. In some instances, several devices will share data and work together toward a common goal. Some will be unobtrusive and generally unnoticed while others will interact perceptibly with people (asking questions, giving reminders).

Some pervasive technologies are also autonomous, or self-directing.

Definition: Autonomous systems are typically computer-based devices augmented with sensing devices beyond those found on a typical desktop computer, including analogues to vision and hearing. An autonomous system can operate for extended periods of time without direct human intervention and alter the way it performs by learning from its own experience. Some autonomous systems can also adapt to particular environments (e.g., by moving safely through a particular house) and some can perform based on non-linear calculations (e.g., Bayesian inference) such that performance cannot be completely predicted or characterized from the system’s programming. Many autonomous systems act only on and through data (as do most desktop computers), but others also act on the physical world (e.g., by welding joints). The latter are considered robots without regard to their physical shape or mobility status (they need not be humanoid and they can be bolted to a factory floor).