Social Implications of Pursuing Sustainability [Guest Editorial]

What happens when engineers start taking sustainability seriously? We devoted several scorching days in Tempe, Arizona, U.S.A., to this question in May 2009 at the IEEE-SSIT International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS´09), and the papers in this Special Issue reflect some of that work. The IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology teamed up with the IEEE Computer Society´s Technical Committee on Sustainable Systems and Technology to organize this event, subtitled “Social Implications of Sustainable Development.” The impetus came partly from the top – the IEEE president sought advice about how to engage constructively – but in fact many of us in SSIT were already thinking about these topics and seized the opportunity.