Addressing Ethics and Sustainability in Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence

Ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence have raised ethical concerns of privacy and autonomy. Increasingly ethics also addresses sustainability and green computing, indeed the ‘first do not harm’ principle is a significant driver. Two of the UN sustainability goals are used to provide a structure for evaluation in this context: good health and wellbeing, quality education. Good health and wellbeing are areas in which ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence can provide significant positive societal impact. However ethical considerations must be part of the design process and software life cycle. Quality education in computing courses should provide knowledge to advance the discipline from a technical standpoint but also to equip students to critically appraise hardware and software implementations from both ethical and sustainability perspectives.