IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2016 - 19

particular groups like children or
the mentally ill.
3) The unknown unknowns are
completely unexpected, and are
for the most part unpredictable
because no evidence exists to
identify particular risk factors or
even attributes linking them to a
given phenomenon. As technologies increase in complexity, we
should expect a greater number
of unknown unknowns, with a
greater severity of consequence.
So-called "humane robots" that
are used in assisted living contexts to aid the elderly (e.g., to get
dressed, remember to take their
tablets, provide fall-down alert
support and more) presently
have a lot of unknown unknowns
attached to them [11], though
equally they may have benefits
that cannot be disputed.
4) The fourth and final category is
the unknown knowns. This category is somewhat of an oxymoron. It cannot be and yet it is.
While creators of new technologies are likely in many ways to be
in the best position to critique
their own creations, most innovators openly say that they have no
idea how their creations will be
used by society, and that we
cannot prejudge ethics. We think
of technologies such as gaming
apps for the smartphone that are
built to encourage return visits
with stickiness features. Yet some
software developers will never
admit to triggering addictions in
members of the populace prone
to addictive behaviors [12].
Such as in the fourth category
above, some technologists in the
areas of artificial intelligence and
robotics tend to shrug off plausible
anticipatory outcomes, knowing
full well what the outcomes could
mean for society at large in the contexts of social and behavioral problems, or even privacy and security.
DECember 2016

Unexpected
Benefits

Unintended
Consequences

Unexpected
Drawbacks

Perverse
Results

Figure 1. The social implications of unintended consequences.

Propelled by a yearning to create,
develop, and deploy, and to be the
first movers, they may a) play down
their creations and the impact they
will have; b) refuse to acknowledge
that anything might go wrong; or
c) when they do admit a potential
risk, they still ask the rest of us to
go down that bleak road with them.
At the point of development and
potential launch of a new product,
the momentum is likely to be such
that we consumers do follow after
them. We follow by purchasing the
new systems or products, or by asking few questions. We might fail then
to ask questions, say about how a
new technology might further distance us from reality, or about how
it might distance us further from our
human relationships [13].
At the moment of writing this editorial (October 21, 2016), nearly half
of the Internet in the United States is
down. A massive distributed denial
of service (DDoS) attack targeted a
company that functions essentially
as a switchboard for the U.S. Inter∕

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

net, translating human-facing web
addresses to the numerical mode of
communication used by computers.
This attack is different from DDoS
attacks we have seen in the past. It
is larger and more powerful. By targeting a company that manages the
infrastructure of the Internet, the
attack has impacted several mainstream websites, as opposed to a
single corporation or organization.
These types of attacks are actually known knowns. That is, we can
have a constant expectation of such
attacks on the Internet. We can
predict that these types of attacks
will only increase in number exponentially, and that they will have ever
greater global economic impact.
But then there are also unknown
knowns related to this latest attack.
Unknown knowns in this case would
be vulnerabilities embedded into a
world built on the Internet of Things
(IoT). This October 16 attack relied
on infected smart devices - networked items such as security
cameras, home routers, and baby

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2016