Building a Socially Embedded Future Internet - Some Research Challenges

1 © 2012 Volker Wulf, University of Siegen

Building a Socially EmbeddedFuture Internet

-Some Research Challenges

Volker Wulf

University of Siegen and Fraunhofer FIT

European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies (EUSSET)

www.eusset.eu


Future Internet: A Socio- technical System

Internet and its applications are becoming an infrastructure for all/different aspects of life

The quality of IT design lies finally in its transformative impacts on social practices» … „to ‘augment’ lives, work, business and spaces in ways that add value” …..

(FIA roadmap)

FIA Roadmap describes societal and business challenges» “The Future Internet is not just a technological, but a socio‐technical system” (FIA

roadmap)

» however: research agenda still lacks an IT design-oriented linkage between the social and the technical

» however: work program, especially sections 6.1 and 6.2 (business and societal applications): mainly technical targets

» Human Computer Interaction: focus on technical mechanisms


Understanding and Designing Social-Embedded Technologies

Research vision: Support / augment social practices instead of pure automatization

Basic approach: Grounding IT research in an analysis of (IT enhanced) social practices

Bringing together» Understanding of existing social practices

» Design of innovative technologies

» Unterstanding the transformative impacts towards ‚augmented‘ practices and social innovations

Insights are situated and require a new approach of careful generalizations

Traditional CS methods do not take the social embeddedness of technologies sufficiently into account


Design Case Studies: Understanding IT-augmented Practices

Design Case Studies» Empirical analysis of given practices in a specific field of

application,» (Participatory) Design of an innovative ICT artifact related to the

findings of the empirical analysis» Investigation into the appropriation of the ICT artifact over a longer

period of time.

Definition describes an ideal type of studies, fragments are often interesting, interleaving temporal order of phases

Prestudy Design Appropriation


Understanding Navigation Practices of Firefighters

Intense work with firefighters

Paris firefighters

Cologne firefighters

Empirical Prestudies

Semi-structured Interviews

Participatory Observation

Problem: Navigation in buildings


Landmarks: Supporting firefighters‘ navigation practises


Design Explorations


Des

ign

Cas

e S

tudi

es in

S

peci

fic A

pplic

atio

n D

omai

nsEnd User

Develop ment

Security &

Privacy

Cross-cutting Issue: Concept building

Health & Aging

Sustain-ability

Smart Cities &Communities

KnowledgeWork

Pro-sumption


Proposal for a Research Line

Extending Living Labs in the real world in a practice-based manner» Cooperative work and coordination in different industries / services» Multinational supply chains» Energy production, distribution, and consumption» …..

Building a corpus of design case studies Comparative analysis for (situated) design principles and

augmentation moves /changes in practices Findings on the application layer needs to interact with

research on technological infrastructure


Europe: Competitive Strengths

Europe has a strong intellectual tradition to ground the field» Philosophical foundations: Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Latour

» Tradition of Socio-technical Systems

» Scandinavian movement of Participatory Design

Sophisticated practices in knowledge-based, highly competitive organizations

Evolutionary model of innovation in organizations (Mayor) Industrial players engaging in practices-based

computing» Philipps, SAP, PSI, Pixelpark, itsme, ….


Additional Materials


Infrastructuring: Toward an Integrated Perspective on the Design and Use of Information Technology (Pipek/Wulf 2009)


Knowledge building in a situated research approach

Current state of the art» Theories and concepts without evaluation and scope of validity» Accumulation of (design) case studies without knowledge

building on top of them

(Design) case studies within a constructionist paradigm» Linked to specific practices and IT design options» Case studies offer thick descriptions» Situated in specific context

Theory and concept building is through comparison of multiple cases (corpus of studies)


Domains of Research with Societal Relevance

Internationally competitive production systems: technologies and work organization

Ecological production and consumption of energy and raw materials

Aging society: health care and social caring New forms of political participation and democratic

legitimation New forms of multinational cooperation and economical

regulation Migration: integration and reference to home community Issues of specific developmental needs: Agriculture, raw

material production, education, health, global cooperation


Research Challenges

Practices are hidden, partly digitalized, complex, developing

Design: creatively linked to practices Technologies: design space is influenced by history of

their emergence Appropriation: creatively inspired by innovative

technological artefacts and transformativly linked to given practice

Changes in practice: driven by multitude of factors Conceptual and theoretical problems- competition rather

than cooperation


Europe: Institutional Problems

EU-IST FP 7 (and 8?) does not provide much funding for EUSSET domains» Periperal work packages in a large variety of domains» Lacking funding in topic areas central to the community» National funding schemes work operate similarly

Cooperation between academia and IT industries and IT user (organizations) does not work perfectly» European funding model ‚in theory‘ perfectly suited but needs

some improvements» Better schemes and techniques required to bridge the gap

between very different communities pf practice


Europe: Institutional Problems - 2

European academic conferences suffer from international competition» Less submissions» Smaller participation» Missing plattform for publication, other than (expensive)

commercial publishers or (US-dominated) ACM-DL

European academic community» Segregated and distributed across different fields, little

shared discourse» Stagnating in size and ageing core actors


Open Issues: Academically

Looking for an appropritate research and design paradigm for the EUSSET community» Bridging between technological innovation and

ethnographical depth

Building knowledge in a situated design community: issue of transferability beyond cases

Bridging among disciplines Opening towards practitioners

Building a Socially Embedded Future Internet - Some Research Challenges

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