IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Fall 2013 - 30

Meetoo-Appavoo et al. examine the
ubiquitous monitoring systems on people's
Many papers
benefits and costs of open-source software
behavior in a Japanese university. While
at ISTAS'12
for developing countries. They consider
acknowledging that ubiquitous monitoring
adopted a
the barriers to adoption through an examitechnologies can have many benefits, there
positive, or
nation of current open-source software
are also many issues for people associated
usage in Mauritius and the likely chalwith undesirable behavior change, coercive
"optimistic,"
lenges to future implementation projects.
effects, data sharing, and privacy that also
perspective
They argue that open-source software can
need to be considered in designing these
and considered
provide numerous benefits to individuals,
technologies.
how beneficial
companies, and software developers in
These articles highlight the enormous
developing nations, but that a number of
technologies can potential of technologies to improve peokey challenges need to be addressed.
be developed to ple's quality of life and well-being. They also
Reihana Mohideen considers the
prompt us to critically consider the social
address social
connection between access to clean and
implications of new technologies and to
problems.
renewable energy and the quality of life
consider how technologies can be developed
of women in South Asia. Her work highto create positive social benefits. Nowhere
lights the many difficulties faced by women without
is this need for critical reflection more profoundly felt than
access to electrification, especially among the ruralwithin the rapidly developing, and developed, nations of
poor of South Asia, and suggests that while providing
Asia. We hope you enjoy this special issue.
access to clean and renewable energy in and of itself
has many quality of life benefits for these women, it
References
also provides an opportunity to address many other
[1] M. Arnold et al., Eds,. Proc. IEEE 2012 Conference on Technology
and Society in Asia. New York, IEEE Press, 2012.
social issues associated with gender inequalities.
[2] K. D. Stephan et al., "Social implications of technology: The past,
finally, in "Salient Perception of a Wearable Monithe present, and the future," Proc. IEEE, vol. 100, pp. 1752-1781, May
toring Device," Moran et al. consider the impact of
2012.

BOOK REVIEW

(continued from page 10)

for students learning the emerging fields of network
science. It also provides more advanced literature in
some important areas. With this in mind, the authors
provide optional sections labeled advanced material at
the ends of most chapters. The advanced sections are
qualitatively different from the other sections; some
draw on sophisticated mathematics. for example we
find in section 3.6 a treatment of betweenness measures and graph partitioning that describes networks
in terms of their tightly-knit regions and weaker ties.
Additionally, the Girvan-Newman graph partitioning method is summarized, which is based on edge
betweenness measures. Similarly, in section 5.5 we
find another advanced topic, an attempt to generalize the definition of structural balance. The advanced
sections are self-contained; they are optional, so that
nothing else in the book depends on them.
Notably absent from the book are questions about
security and risk problems in networks, which might
well have been included along with issues of privacy.
for example, David Kirkpatrick reports in his book The
30

Facebook Effect that facebook developers made a sport
of spotting budding romantic alliances based on messaging and profile viewing patterns [1]. Security problems in social networks are difficult and I think that this
book would be enhanced by a chapter explaining challenges and solutions for social network security.
A complete mastery of the book would require
that a reader have acquired basic network theory and
mathematical modeling in advance. In summary, this
work describes many kinds of connections in modern society and the real world, and is a good bridge
between network technology and social science.

Acknowledgment
Chen Hongsong's work is supported by the fundamental Research funds for the Central Universities
(No. fRf-TP-12-075A).

Reference

[1] C. Dwyer, "Privacy in the Age of Google and facebook," IEEE
Technology & Society Mag., vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 58-63, 2011.
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

fALL 2013

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