Professor Ojelanki Ngwenyama will present a School of IT colloquium entilted, "The Internet of Things and Other Webs of Entrapment"

For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize. They wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little to greater matters. A man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant. Therefore, since theyphilosophized in order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end. Aristotle, Metaphysics, I. Part 2.

Abstract: 

Digitalization of ordinary everyday human activities is precipitating profound transformations of our social systems, the collective consequences of which are unforeseeable. And yet, critical debate about the consequences of our technological innovations to our forms of life is not central in our scientific discourse. We are experiencing digital risk events on our social systems and institutions that have catastrophic consequences on our way of life. For example, the 2007 denial of service attack which for a time crippled economic activity in the nation state of Estonia. Present developments of pervasive digitalization are undermining the foundations of ‘the good life’ of modern cosmopolitan societies, gifted to us from the enlightenment project. These events point to the unraveling of our democratic social and institutional structures which we have so painfully develop over many centuries. As a scientific community intimately connected to digitalization, we have a responsibility to critically debate these issues. The risks from pervasive digitalization of everyday human activities facing our global world is a paradigm problem that challenges computer and information scientists to engage in finding solutions. We need a new enlightenment project that could influence the design ideals of the emerging digital society.

ProfessorOjelanki Ngwenyama is Research Professor of Information Systems, University of Cape Town; Professor and Director, Institute of Innovation and Technology Management, Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada and Professorial Research Fellow in Information Systems and Analytics, Deakin University Business School, Melbourne, Australia. He is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa, and recently nominated to the Royal Society of Canada. Prof. Ngwenyama holds a D.Phil (honoris causa, 2009), Faculty of Engineering, University of Pretoria, South Africa, a Ph.D. in Computer Science (1988) from The Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering, State University of New York at Binghamton. His ranked in the Top 100 IS Researchers worldwide by AIS (1990-2017) and he is NRF B2 rated. He has published more than 100 scholarly articles; and serves on the editorial boards of many top international journals in information systems including European Journal of Information Systems (Senior Editor), Journal of the Association of Information Systems, Information Systems Frontiers and Journal of Information Technology for development.

Ojelanki Ngwenyama is Visiting Research Professor at Institut d’ Economie et Management de Nantes, Université de Nantes, France; Visiting Research Professor in Inter-Organizational Information Systems, University of Munster, Germany. In 2012 he was VELUX Foundation Visiting Research Professor, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark; 2011 Andrew Mellon Foundation Mentorship Professor at University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is also Visiting Research Professor of Information Systems in the Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University, Denmark, since 1997; Docent in Computer Science & Information Systems, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, since 1994; Visiting Research Professor of Informatics, Aarhus Business School, University of Aarhus, Denmark, 2006-2009; Visiting Professor, Department of Informatics, University of Pretoria, South Africa, 1992-2001. His past permanent appointments were at Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA and York University, Toronto, Canada.