November 9 - 11, 1997
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| BACKGROUND PAPERS |  |
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There are several reports that we would like you to be familar with to help you inform the report(s) that will come from this workshop. The first two are particularly important.
See abstract below
See abstract below
See abstract below
See abstract below
See abstract below
See abstract below
See abstract below
The National Information Infrastructure is the major technological development affecting broad segments of the American public at the end of the 20th century. Built upon convergent technological developments in telecommunications and computing and avidly promoted by industrial, government and academic interests, the NII is already changing the way Americans live, work, learn and consume.
Recognizing the potential of these technological developments to transform society, on June 1-2, 1995, the American Anthropological Association and the Computing Research Association, under National Science Foundation sponsorship, convened the Workshop on Culture, Society and Advanced Information Technology. This workshop brought 33 social and computer scientists from government, industry and the academic community together (plus three attendees from NSF, two from AAA and one from CRA) to examine the dimensions of social impacts of the NII and to ask what useful, critical and researchable questions the NII raises for society.
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The main goal of the Workshop is to ascertain the future research directions of the important and exciting emerging field of Human-Centered Intelligent Systems. Ultimately, all computer systems are user centered. The two and half day Workshop will consist of plenary talks and breakout group discussions.
Chapter 5: Organizational and Social Informatics in System Design
Computer systems have constituted a significant presence in American business, government, and cultural life for about a third of a century, and with each passing year they evolve rapidly in technical sophistication, in scope of use, and in processing power. Despite the extraordinary advances achieved to date, a tone of concern has developed among the many scholarly disciplines which work with these technologies. There is widespread agreement that we need new ways of thinking about computers and information technologies: new conceptions of how computing fits into larger organizational processes; a better understanding of how the soft" human systems and skills surrounding the machinery contribute to the success or failure of the enterprise; improved theories about how decision-making activities are best distributed between humans and machines, and how the interior processes of machines can be represented symbolically so that human operators can really remain in control"; new ways to grasp the role of information technologies as arteries in vast communication networks of people, groups, and organizations. These are all major intellectual challenges for researchers in the years ahead... The promise of human-centered systems is that knowledge of human users and the social context in which systems are expected to operate become integrated into the computer science agenda, even at the earliest stages of research and development...Fortunately, we are not beginning in total ignorance of relevant principles. For the last 20 years there has been a growing body of research that examines social aspects of computerization -- including the roles of information technology in organizational and social change and the ways that the social organization of information technologies influence social practices (and are influenced by them). This body of research is called Social Informatics (and Organizational Informatics when the focus is upon systems used within organizations).
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Computer Science is hard pressed in the US to show broad utility to help justify billion dollar research programs and the value of educating well over 40,000 Bachelor of Science and Master of Science specialists annually in the U.S. The Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the U.S. National Research Council has recently issued a report, "Computing the Future (Hartmanis and Lin, 1992)" which sets a new agenda for Computer Science. The report recommends that Computer Scientists broaden their conceptions of the discipline to include computing applications and domains to help understand them. This short paper argues that many Computer Science graduates need some skills in analyzing human organizations to help develop appropriate systems requirements since they are trying to develop high performance computing applications that effectively support higher performance human organizations. It is time for academic Computer Science to embrace organizational analysis (the field of Organizational Informatics) as a key area of research and instruction.
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The goal of this workshop is to assess current understanding, across disciplines, of the human dimensions of knowledge networking. An important aspect of this goal involves identifying and prioritizing research topics and agendas relating to the implementation and implications of knowledge networking throughout society.
In particular, the workshop will focus on the needs and challenges faced by all researchers in a networked environment, such as identifying mechanisms for acculturation, socialization, and community-building, for sharing and dissemination of knowledge, and for articulation of ethical, social, and legal concerns.
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The Information Technology and Organizations (ITO) Program within the National Science Foundation provides research funding to a diverse group of researchers. Their work ranges from theoretical research concerned with models of organizational information structures to applied research on coordinated work and architecture of workflow systems.
The specific objectives of the 1997 ITO workshop are (1) to convene active researchers from different, but related disciplines to focus upon significant research issues facing researchers funded under the ITO program, (2) to build the cohesiveness and cross-fertilization of research in the ITO program (3) to generate materials that will help to communicate the ITO mission to attending PIs and to potential new PIs after the workshop, and (4) to evolve and further coalesce the ITO missions. The interdisciplinary nature of the subject areas and the people involved are both a challenge and a strength. The idea of gathering together the investigators who are supported by NSF, ITO is an exciting one. It can be a valuable, potentially very productive way to simultaneously help NSF to solidify the ITO thrusts and to draw more proposals, and also to allow the investigators to share perspectives, to cross fertilize, and to broaden the horizons of their thinking.
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Three years after the launch of the Digital Library Initiative (DLI) and as the initial period of funding draws to a close, this workshop was convened to consider the next step in this vein of research. The very broad title of the workshop, "Distributed Knowledge Work Environments," was deliberately chosen to encourage thinking that would transcend current notions of digital libraries. The consensus after the workshop was, however, that the phrase "digital library" did not overly constrain another round of advanced initiatives and that the phrase "distributed knowledge work environments" was unnecessarily broad. It was noted, however, that the concept of a "digital library" is not merely equivalent to a digitized collection with information management tools. It is rather an environment to bring together collections, services, and people in support of the full life cycle of creation, dissemination, use, and preservation of data, information, and knowledge. The challenges and opportunities that motivate an advanced digital library research initiative are associated with this broad view of digital library environment. Additional digital library research will also both exploit and help motivate investments in advanced networking and high-end computation.
The participants included representatives of the initial DLI projects, representatives of the DLI funding agencies (NSF, DARPA, NASA), and representatives of various bodies both public and private involved in similar activities and/or for whom the work in progress offers considerable promise in dealing with the mounting problems of collecting, archiving, processing, and presenting digital data.
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This workshop brought together 32 scholars, researchers, and practitioners from the emerging community concerned with social aspects of digital libraries, plus the 8 UCLA investigators. The goals were to assess existing knowledge that might inform research in this area and to propose a research agenda that would pose new questions.
Research issues raised in the workshop were organized into three foci: human-centered, artifact-centered, and systems-centered. Recommendations for research be conducted on these themes, that scholars from multiple disciplines be encouraged to develop joint projects, that scholars and practitioners work together, and that digital libraries be developed and evaluated in operational, as well as experimental, work environments.
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| This page prepared by V. Weiley Last update: 10.29.97 |
Send comments to siwkshop@indiana.edu | |
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