[Air-l] CfP COST 298: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UNEXPECTED. The user and the future of information and communication technologies. Moscow 23 - 25 May 2007

[Frank Thomas]

- Apologies for eventual cross postings -

The European network COST 298 Participation in the Broadband Society 
invites you to actively participate in our research conference in 
Moscow, 23-25 May 2007.

The main objective of the conference is to create new knowledge about 
users’ creativity and facilitate their empowerment in a broadband 
information society. This knowledge requires an examination of the 
factors that can both constrain and enhance users’ abilities to shape 
and use ICTs.

>From our perspective, the ‘broadband society’ refers to a possible, but 
not inevitable, substantial transformation of our experience of 
telecommunications based on these technologies allowing information and 
communication technologies to be used everywhere, all the time and by 
everybody. Given the widespread aspirations of Governments and companies 
to achieve this goal, the extent to which any such transformation has 
occurred needs, of course, to be evaluated in a balanced manner.

Broadband technologies have resulted mainly from technological and 
institutional imperatives.
To what extent have potential users managed to find ways in which such 
technologies can be useful, worthwhile and attractive?

We certainly know from previous research this can require those users to 
be creative in terms of fitting ICTs into their activities or using them 
to find solutions to the everyday problems that they already encounter. 
But how much is being demanded of those users, what considerations have 
a bearing upon whether these technologies actually find a place in their 
lives and what new issues, of indeed problems, can these ICTs themselves 
create, especially if they really are ‘disruptive technologies’?

Ultimately, we also need to acknowledge that users may well decide that 
their existing solutions suffice, in which case these new technological 
options may find only a modest place in their lives. Indeed, they may 
even be resisted or ignored.

Whatever strategies users employ for assessing and dealing with such 
innovations, we need to learn more about these social processes, 
including strategies for dealing with the up and coming generation of 
new information and communication products and services. Only by so 
doing can we hope to empower them further in their relationships to 
technology and through this hope to increase the quality of their lives.

In this conference, the organisers - COST Action 298 
<http://coference.cost298.org> - invite technology and product 
developers, designers, social scientists, policy makers, community 
representatives and others who are interested in the conference topics, 
to join our attempt to develop this discussion on a common, shared and 
transdisciplinary ground. We ask participants to

1) strive to present their topic from a human-centric point of view as 
opposed to a technology-, product- or business-centric one, and to

2) present their topic in a language that attempts to transcend 
disciplinary boundaries, a language that non-experts can also 
understand, and to

3) not only report on their work, but also to engage in the conference 
debate which aims to develop ways to understand the interests of people 
and society, to evaluate developments against such an evolving 
understanding, and to chart interesting and desirable future directions.

The emphasis of this event will be on networking and promoting a 
dialogue with colleagues from around Europe and the rest of the world.

We look forward to seeing you in Moscow for a conference designed to be 
exciting, thought-provoking and challenging.

*Dates:*
Deadline for submission: *10 January* *2007
*Notification of acceptance : 28 February 2007

For further details please visit http://conference.cost298.org/
Cheers
F. Thomas

-- 
..........................................
Dr. Frank Thomas
FTR Internet Research
93110 Rosny-sous-Bois
France