Fostering Research on the Economic and Social Impacts of Information Technology (1998) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix B: Position Papers Submitted by Workshop
Appendix B: Position Papers Submitted by Workshop
Pages 131-162
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B Position Papers Submitted by Workshop Participants
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" The future is important, and these kinds of questions are valid, but this stance has had some unfortunate implications for impact research in the past. Among these are the following: · A tendency to support the development of theoretical models to predict what will be or might be the case, rather than pursue empirical studies of what actually is happening now.
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If IT impact research were a normal social science discipline, such striking findings would be viewed as important scientific puzzles, unleashing a stream of follow-up research seeking insights into human-computer interactions implied by these failures. By and large this has not occurred, because of a widespread mentality that says that any problems with IT that impact studies unearth are simply minor implementation issues and will be overcome by the next generation of technology.
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Black box research on impacts often discovered "inconsistent" outcomes across studies but proved unable to show why there was so much variation, because it neglected to measure the contextual variables that were moderating the effects of the input upon the output. For example, the old paradigm would phrase a research question so as to ask whether or not home PCs would improve kids' school performance.
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contextual variables should be studied rigorously, and their moderating effects on technology outcomes should be a major part of inquiry; (6) we should reconceptualize what we are doing as social and economic studies of computing and communications technologies rather than technology impact studies, and try to avoid technological determinism.
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As a researcher I find the literature on educational computing quite maddening. There are exciting claims of accelerated learning using computerized tools, but the research rarely gets replicated, and even the most lauded programs (e.g., the algebra tutor at Carnegie Mellon)
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For instance, is there no such thing as "all information" relevant to a particular topic? Are standards problems, intellectual property rights problems, database search limitations, or other issues likely to bound us well away from that "all information available" state?
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Tape backups are sometimes even worse. New backup software is sometimes not backwards compatible, so that one needs old copies of backup software as well as a compatible tape drive in order to restore data.
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For the majority of students, however, the presence of a live instructor, will, in my view, continue to be far more effective than a computer assisted counterpart in facilitating positive educational outcomes, just as for most work relationships, a live supervisor is going to be more effective than a computer replacement. The most important impact of information technology will likely occur in increasing the productivity of the hours students spend outside of the classroom.
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Expensive overhead cameras that convert documents to a video feed currently have lower resolution than standard overhead projectors. The greatest potential for new information technology lies in improving the productivity of time spent outside the classroom.
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My own focus is on the third context. What do we know about the social consequences institutional or privateof CMC?
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Understanding these effects involves broader-scale and more difficult questions, such as the following: · Does the diffusion of CMC significantly affect the spatial pattern of towns? (Are we ever going to get the dispersed world of telecommuting, first predicted in 1893?
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The behavioral sciences, which span everything from history to social psychology, rely on observation of behavior whether embodied in dusty census records or recorded by telemarketers. The implications of this type of research in the networked information environment are potentially substantial.
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Nevertheless, in order for applications in the networked information environment to accommodate the variation in users and in uses (which is appreciated but not fully understood) , much more research is required on information-seeking behaviors outside formal library and/or academic settings.
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146 APPENDIX B tools by which we will do that as well as the shape and form of products and services to be offered are likely to change. In the near term, this will closely resemble contemporary research that evaluates users' demand for and satisfaction with products and services.
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What are the current national policies regarding anonymous speech and commerce? In a networked world, what are the external and extraterritorial effects of one nation's policies regarding anonymous speech and commerce?
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As it becomes clearer in at least some jurisdictions which domestic rules apply to certificates, digital signatures, and electronic commerce generally, the issue of selecting among, or meditating between, possibly conflicting rules in the various states and countries that could be associated with the transaction will become inescapable. A first step toward resolving these issues would be to undertake a considerable project of description, one that would look not only at the applicable substantive law, but also at the diverse choice-oflaw rules that states might apply to transjurisdictional electronic commerce.
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Is self-selection a viable method for decisions that do not relate to technical standards, and which in most cases apply to issues that are neither life-threatening nor of widespread salience? What sort of social practices is the vigilante-style Internet method of enforcing social norms suited to?
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In this seemingly vast literature, one can find a number of analytical strategies for understanding the social consequences of computerization. In popular and much of the professional writing it is easier to find elements of technological determinism.
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It is hard to estimate the role of the mass media in popularizing the Internet and the WWW in 1993-1994; but the enthusiasm of reporters and the sudden broad visibility of URLs in national media in 1994-1995 should not be ignored. However, ideas about the social shaping of CCS and social influences on their use have diffused rather slowly into professional and popular writing.
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, and transaction costs (default rules, social conventions)
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So, at least one set of fundamentally important questions for research involves looking beneath specific impacts to uncover the institutional structures, assumptions, and rigidities that are becoming dysfunctional, and then considering how to facilitate the transition to new institutions that are likely to accommodate the effects of exponential decreases in the costs of sand and silicon. · What government core institutions underlie market interventions, subsidy and tax policies, and trade policies?
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Many observers but not economists for the most part have suggested that "traditional economics is dead," that there is a "new" economics of information. Yet the "special" features of information problems are familiar in economics: high fixed costs plus low variable costs, congestion externalities, positive network externalities, and tipping.
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; · Artificial agent economies: how to harness the efficiency, stability and robustness of competitive economies for real-time management and control of complex systems (electric grids, telecommunications networks, smart highways, spread-spectrum bandwidth allocation) ; and · Evaluation and social filtering: the economics of attention, trust, and reputation.
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contract consummation. Such transactions may also have lower transaction costs than secure payment systems, even in the realm of purely electronic transactions.
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and perhaps devise ways to increase a social network' s level of reciprocity. In the last couple of years, I have become particularly interested in the concept of social capital, as articulated by James Coleman, Robert Putnam, and others.
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It is a closed economy "trade" model with "biased" technical change (Johnson and Stafford, 1998~. Skilled and unskilled workers produce different goods.
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We have developed a methodology for studying the value of nonmarket output though the use of time-use diary data, based on a grant from the National Science Foundation in the mid 1970s and early 1980s. We are currently studying the access of children under the age of 12 to information technology with time-use diaries both in the home and in schools.
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Ubiquitous computing will require a new approach to fitting technology to our lives, an approach we call "calm computing." Calm computing is not a natural result of increased use of technology in fact unbridled digital technology naturally decreases calm. Imagine the following experiment; or if you are brave, try it.
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8. "Uglying" names, with an ugly word, the uncomfortable feeling with which the low state of design in digital technology leaves us.
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