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By social good we refer to a "good" or a service that benefits the largest number of people in the largest possible way. Some classic examples of social goods are, of course, healthcare, safety, environment, democracy, and human rights, but we can add to this classic list even communication, art, entertainment and much more.

In this context, the popularity of portable computing devices, like smartphones, tablets, or smart watches combined with the emergence of many other small smart objects with computational, sensing and communication capabilities coupled with the popularity of social networks and new human-technology interaction paradigms is creating unprecedented opportunities for each of us to do something useful, ranging from a single person to the whole world. Furthermore, Internet of Things, Smart-cities, distributed sensing and Fog computing are representative examples of modern ICT paradigms that aim to describe a dynamic and globally cooperative infrastructure built upon objects' intelligence and self-configuring capabilities. These connected objects are finding their way into our pockets, vehicles, urban areas and infrastructure, thus becoming the very texture of our society and providing us the possibility, but also the responsibility, to shape it.

 

In GOODTECHS we are hence interested in experiences with the design, implementation, deployment, operation and evaluation of smart objects and technologies for social good. Clearly, we are not considering only the so called first world as the scenario for this evolution; we also refer to those areas where ICT is currently less widespread, hoping that it may represent a societal development opportunity rather than a source for further divide.