Bridging the Gap: Interdisciplinary Information Technology Research

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Bridging the Gap Interdisciplinary Information
Technology Research

Suzi Iacono, Digital Society and Technologies
Program, National Science Foundation Connecting
Research and Policy in the Digital Economy,
January 29, 2003
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Background on 1st International Conference on
Social and Economic Implications of IT

• Interagency coordinating group
• Social, Economic and Workforce (SEW) 7
  Implications of IT
• One of 7 coordinating groups
• One Part of IWG on NITRD
• 1.9B budget
• Charge develop synergies across the agencies and
  develop new research agendas
• Gap analyses

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Many gaps

• Between researchers and policy makers
• Conferences
• Clearing house
• Between research in the US on social and economic
  implications of IT and other parts of the world
• Between research on the technical and the social
  ? interdisciplinary research
• Between today and tomorrow

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NSFs Mission

• To promote the progress of science to advance
  the national health, prosperity, and welfare and
  to secure the national defense.

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NSFs Mission (2)

• External orientation in order to advance
  national prosperity and welfare
• Must pay attention to complex, interdependent and
  changing societal problems
• E.G., changing atmosphere, economies, and
  workplace skills, new threats like bio-terrorism
  and demands like homeland security

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NSFs Mission (3)

• Internal orientation in order to promote the
  progress of science
• Must seize the greatest opportunities science is
  creating for discovery and the improvement of the
  human condition
• Number of scientific fields are exploding (8,530
  in 1987), many from new interdisciplinary areas
• Marburger (scientific advisor to the president)--
  science based science policy discovery and the
  creation of new technologies are unlikely to
  emerge from mandates in service to a particular
  social issue

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Priority Areas
Millions of Dollars
FY 2002 Plan
FY 2003 Request
Percent Change
199
221
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Nanoscale SE
Information Technology Research
278
286
3
30
60
100
Mathematical Sciences
Social, Behavioral Economic Sciences
0
10
N/A
Biocomplexity in the Environment
58
79
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Learning for the 21st Century Workforce
145
185
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ITR People and Society Research Areas

• 1999 Social and Economic Implications of IT
• 2000 People and Social Groups Interacting with
  Computers and Infrastructure
• 2001 -- Augmenting Individuals and Transforming
  Society
• 2002 People and Society

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Digital Society and Technologies Universal
Participation in a Digital Society
Global
Suburban rural
Urban
In-building
Pico-Cell
Satellite
Macro-Cell
Micro-Cell
Pico-Cell
Adapted from Tim Hewitt, UMTS Overview, TIA
inf. Session, ITU Comf., Mpls, MN, Oct. 17-18,
1998
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Why is Digital Society a Difficult Area of
Science?

• Important goals Transforming Enterprise,
  Science, Community, Society, etc. while doing no
  harm and maybe doing some benefit
• Yet field is fragmented, no one discipline where
  this research is conducted

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Implications of IT
Computational Org Theory
IT-IN-USE
Economics of IT
Value Sensitive Design
Multi-Agent Systems
Collaboration Technologies
Coordination Theories
Primary DST SubfieldsCSS
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Research on Social and Economic Implications of
IT Causal Links
Design Development of IT
Social, Behavioral, Economic, Legal and Ethical
Outcomes of IT
Use of IT
Context/Domain of Use
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Disciplinary Research on Social and Economic
Implications of IT Computer Science
Design Development of IT
Use of IT
Computer Science Focus is on the Artifact and
Usability
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Disciplinary Research on Social and Economic
Implications of IT Social, Economic and
Behavioral Sciences
Social, Behavioral, Economic, Legal and Ethical
Outcomes
Use of IT
Social and Economic Sciences Focus is on Use and
Social Outcomes
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Disciplinary Research on Social and Economic
Implications of IT Computer Science and SES
Use of IT
Social, Behavioral, Economic, Legal Ethical
Outcomes
Design Development of IT
Cross-disciplinary Overlap at Use
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Interdisciplinary Research on Social and Economic
Implications of IT
Long Term Outcomes
Use of IT
Design Development
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The Interdisciplinary Challenge

• Theorizing IT artifacts and social systems
• IT with life cycles and dynamics
• IT as embedded in contexts, activities and
  relationships, which are also evolving as in
  coinventions or coevolution
• That include unintended uses and consequences
• As part of a feedback loop whereby there are
  constant new revisions in IT and transformations
  in social systems

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Interdisciplinary Research on Social and Economic
Implications of IT
New Uses
New Consequences
New Versions
Social, Behavioral, Economic, Legal Ethical
Outcomes
Use of IT
Design Development of IT
Unintended Uses
New Designs
Unintended Consequences
Incorporate unintended uses and consequences into
new designs
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Disciplinary Knowledge Necessary to Complete the
Virtuous Cycle
Domain Science
Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences
Information TechnologyResearch
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Example Scientific Collaboratories

• One vision of the future is the Collaboratory a
  combination of technology, tools, and
  infrastructure that allows scientists to work
  with remote facilities (co-laboratory) and one
  another (collaboratory) as if they were colocated
  and effectively interfaced.
• (Lederberg and Uncapher, 1989).

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Scientific Collaboratories
People to people links
Integration through distributed, media-rich
network connections
People to information links
People to facilities links
(From Finholt and Olson, 1997)
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UARC/SPARC Collaboratory

• Research on UARC started in 1992 research on
  SPARC started in 1998
• Research team from U MI composed of
• 9 space physicists
• 3 computer scientists
• 6 behavioral scientists
• Goal enable science that would not have been
  done otherwise

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Lessons Learned ? New Versions

• System needed to scale as number of users and
  sites increased
• As collaborations increased, need for software
  that recognized different roles of users and
  subclusters of work
• Screen real-estate was a critical issue users
  spent considerable time arranging their screens.
• Users needed to add instrument viewers, analysis
  tools and access to their archival data during a
  collaborative session
• Scientists need to be able to move between
  individual work and their collaborative work
• Scientists preferred to not do analysis in
  real-time but to organize post-facto
  collaborative workshops

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The Virtuous Cycle Research on Social and
Economic Implications of IT
New Uses
New Consequences
New Versions
Social, Behavioral, Economic, Legal Ethical
Outcomes
Use of IT
Design Development of IT
Unintended Uses
New Designs
Unintended Consequences
Incorporate unintended uses and consequences into
new designs
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What the virtuous cycle suggests

• Start studying technologies early, as they are
  being developed
• Include social, technical and domain users in
  prospective research projects
• Embed human values in the technologies as they
  are being developed and designed
• Willingness of social scientists to learn about
  technology, not as a black box include theories
  of IT in academic curriculum
• Willingness of computer scientists to understand
  long-term transformation, implications and use
  social science research for new versions
• Need for long-term studies

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Complex Problems

• How can we work at a distance as effectively as
  we work face-to-face?
• How do we develop and maintain an IT workforce?
• How can we develop and use knowledge environments
  to do better science?
• How can we develop software that embeds human
  values?
• How can we develop educational technologies that
  promote learning?
• How do we develop machines, devices and software
  agents that are intelligent and sociable and what
  we want in terms of interaction and division of
  labor?
• What is the role of open source software
  communities, movements and what does this mean to
  the software industry?
• How can we manage knowledge intensive dynamic
  systems?

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Practical Challenges

• Bringing researchers together, learning to
  collaborate
• Institutional reward structures
• Disciplinary turf issues, conflict due to
  misunderstanding
• Researchers stuck in their disciplinary training,
  methods

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Conclusions

• Interdisciplinary research what are the steps
  to pull together design, use, and outcome
  assessments of IT and put together the social
  with the technical?
• Challenge -- need to allow streams of
  interdisciplinary research to continue over years
• Policy issues lets build policy into
  technology in the early stages so that it embeds
  human values we care about instead of waiting
  until after it is out there