Representative FY 2002 agency activities
NSF: Support for research on effective uses of IT in education;
social and economic implications of IT (such as e-commerce and the
digital economy; community networking; computer-supported collaborative
work; IT and transformations in work life; value systems in IT design,
deployment, and consequences; information privacy and intellectual
property; and the role of IT in facilitating scientific progress);
issues related to attracting and retaining a strong workforce; technologies
and tools enabling people to use IT regardless of age or physical
limitation; and IT in the social and behavioral sciences
|
New modes of learning, research, communication,
commerce, and human services are proliferating so rapidly that we
as a society have hardly paused to contemplate the changes or analyze
their effects on people and institutions. Most IT research investments
to date understandably have centered on development of the new technologies
themselves. A number of recent studies have brought into focus, however,
the need for investment in research to identify, understand, anticipate,
and address the unintended consequences of the increasing pace of
technology transformation.
The NITRD agencies have begun a vigorous interdisciplinary research
program to look much more closely at the nature and dynamics of the
interactions between IT and social systems. This research will develop
both empirical maps of the landscape of social change and new theories
and models to describe the complex process of adaptation and interchange
between humans and large-scale technical systems.
The research agenda will address a major initial challenge: Development
of an intellectual architecture for this new multidisciplinary research
area. Researchers currently working on IT-related studies are scattered
across many different disciplines without either a single focus to
draw them together or a multidisciplinary communications network oriented
to their work. NITRD seeks to foster a national infrastructure for
social, economic, and workforce-related research and to attract additional
scholars to the work to be done. This capacity-building effort will
provide policymakers, for the first time, with current, research-based
findings about IT's societal effects.
Multidisciplinary research areas to be examined in FY 2002 include
universal participation in the digital society; information privacy
and intellectual property in the digital society; large-scale social
technologies for science, education, and work collaboration and learning;
ethical principles in socio-technical design; and technologies for
independence throughout life. Projects focus on basic research, applications,
and infrastructure topics to increase the value of IT to all sectors
of society and the ability of individuals and social groups to participate
in and contribute to advances in IT.
- New knowledge about the interaction among people, groups,
computing applications, communications networks, and information
infrastructures across distances and in various social,
cultural, legal, economic, and ethical contexts
- New knowledge about participation in a digital society,
including such aspects as the digital economy, modes of
work, Internet governance and Internet citizenship, barriers
to universal access and participation, and cybercrime and
law enforcement
- Fundamental theoretical and legal analyses and empirical
studies of intellectual property and privacy issues in the
digital age
- Research on integration and uses of large-scale social
technologies for collaboration and learning in science,
education, and the workplace
- Significant advances in our scientific understanding of
what technologies, tools, and applications are effective
for learning
- Research on technologies for successful aging
- Studies of ethical principles in IT socio-technical designs
|
|
