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.