Modeling the Social Impacts of Technology via Spectral Graph Theory

Abstract Technology has social, economic, and environmental impacts. During the design process, these impacts are often adequately known for the direct users of a technology, but the same is not true for impacts on the wider society. Socio-technical models can be constructed and used to represent society and the impacts of technologies therein. These models can facilitate estimations of the social impacts that a particular technology, such as an engineered product, has on society. Diffusion theory provides a framework for representing impact propagation across a society using socio-technical models. This paper introduces a problem formulation for modeling impact diffusion. Spectral graph theory is used to solve the problem and estimate impacts across society. A simple impact diffusion illustration is provided relative to a rural community’s water supply and hand-pump technologies for accessing drinking water. The impact diffusion model for engineered products, presented in this paper, provides design insights on societal impact not yet found in the literature. These insights facilitate impact estimation across multiple levels of society (individual, household, community, nation state), which allows for meaningful exploration of technological interventions during the engineering design process.