Information Technology

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Information Technology Informatics 04189103

• Course Introduction Overview
• Philosophical Intellectual Underpinnings
• Approaches to Learning
• September 2003

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Your Instructors

• Sergio Chaparro
• Catherine Smith Teaching assistant

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Information Technologyand Informatics

• Overviews the principal theoretical and social
  themes across the ITI major
• Takes a people-centered, social perspective
• Provides opportunities for consideration of
  elective studies and career choices
• Prerequisite for applying to the ITI major

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ITI 103 Information Technologyand Informatics

• Intellectual course MINDS ON
• NOT
• Technical course HANDS ON

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The Odyssey of 21ST Century

• 1968 Stanley Kubrick film
• 2001 A Space Odyssey
• Houston Chronicle 06/23/99
• A Different Space Odyssey
• Earth Space to Universal Space to Digital
  Space
• Marketing Week 01/14/00
• E-topia or Cyberspace Oddity

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The Odyssey of 21st Century

• Chicago Tribune 01/01/01 Our Odyssey
  Continues From Sydney to Chicago, World
  Celebrates Free of Y2K
• The Independent (London) 12.30.00
• A Grace Oddity Original sin is back Our
  technological skills grow constantly, and yet we
  fail to make equivalent moral progress Which is
  why even secularists are wondering again about
  evil

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The Context of ITI Major

• School of Communication, Information and Library
  Studies
• Interdisciplinary view of communication, media
  and information
• Professional focus leading careers in industry
• Communication and information processes
• Institutions and technologies central to
  creation, transmission, storage, retrieval and
  use of information
• Impact of information on individual,social,
  organizational, national and international
  affairs.

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The Context T2P P2P

• People Technology - People
• Connecting with information
• Interacting with information
• Utilizing information
• People as creators, recipients,users,
  intermediaries

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Societal Transition

• Gernot Wersig (1990)
• BACK-TO-KNOWEDGE DIRECTION
• An information culture founded on understanding
  the relationship of information, people, senses,
  space, technology and time.

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HIGH-TECH CAREERSStar-Ledger

• Technical Support Specialist
• Web Analyst and Designer
• IT Project Manager
• Manager, Lab Systems Technology
• Manager, Computer-Assisted Learning Environment

• E-Business Technical Project Leader
• Technical Architect
• Systems Analyst
• Client/Server Developer
• Help Desk Analyst
• Knowledge Manager
• Java Trainer

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HIGH-TECH CAREERS QUALITIES

• Strong customer relationship and people focus,
  team-building, project management skills in a
  fast-paced, fast changing, dynamic work
  environment
• Knowledge of technical, organizational and social
  aspects of information technologies
• Strong technical background programming,
  systems, softwares, web literacies
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Engagement and adaptability

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HIGH-TECH CAREERS QUALITIES

• This position requires innovative, creative
  thinkers with excellent communication skills and
  a strong technical background
• This position requires a strong technical
  background, excellent communication skills and a
  proven record of success must be able to build
  and manage multiple teams in a fast-paced
  environment

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P2P
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF TECHNOLOGY
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Where to now?

• What should everyone in this course know about
  information technology in order to use it more
  effectively now and in the future?
• How would this be demonstrated?

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Your Learning?

• Three Kinds of Knowledge Needed
• Foundational Concepts
• Contemporary Skills
• Intellectual Capabilities

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Foundational Concepts

• Basic theories, principles and ideas of I.T.,
  organizations, people, and information that
  underpin technology and its use
• Raw material for understanding new information
  technology and its use as they evolve
• The how and why that provide insight to
  opportunities and limitations

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Foundational Concepts

• The role of information / communication
  technologies
• Current theorizing about information technology
  technological determinism, social construction of
  technology, technological utopia and dystopia
• Social dimensions, impacts and issues of
  computerization social informatics
• Information, disinformation,misinformation
  Making sense of the cyberworld
• Information behavior and human-computer
  Interaction
• Race, gender and technology access, equity, and
  the digital divide
• Managing the technological environment
• Information intelligence asset or liability
• Implications for professional information work

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http//www.pathfinder.com/TIME/cloning/dolly1.htm
lDolly An Unsettling Breakthrough

• Dr. Ian Wilmut, Roslin Inst.
• Dolly is a carbon copy of her biological mother
  a laboratory counterfeit so exact that she is in
  essence her mother's identical twin.

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http//www.globalchange.com/clonech.htm

• Recover someone who was loved
• Infertility - give birth to "yourself", your own
  twin
• Eugenics - an attempt to improve the human race.
• Megalomania - a desire to reproduce one's own
  qualities
• Spare parts
• Assisting medical research
• Just curiosity

• Health risks from mutation of genes - an abnormal
  baby would be a nightmare come true.
• Emotional risks - child grows up knowing her
  mother is her sister, her grandmother is her
  mother. 
• Risk of abuse of the technology

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Wired February 2001

• "opposition to cloning is just another form of
  racism, amounting to discrimination against
  people based on another genetic trait--the fact
  that somebody already has an identical DNA
  sequence."    
• Nathan Myhrvold
• (former Microsoft CTO turned biotech investor)

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Stem Cell Research

• The collision of science, information technology,
  morality, and politics

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Stem Cell Research

• http//www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/stemcell/
• On one side the best hope for finding cures for
  debilitating diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer's
  and Parkinson's.
• On the other side stem cell research considered
  to be the taking of a human life, because embryos
  must be destroyed to harvest the stem cells.

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Questions of Life
Is there space for humans and humanity in this
age of technocentrism?
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YOUR EYES AS PASSPORT
Developed by Eye Ticket Corporation with Iridian
Technologies in NJ. Uses iris-scanning technology
to identify travelers Iris has 240 unique
areas Requires initial enrolment and iris
scanning Infrared captures image of iris encoded
as 512 byte code Travelers go through camera
and image is coded and matched to existing file
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• Discovery of Longevity Gene
• Research suggests that there is a region of the
  DNA structure that harbors some sort of gene
  conferring longevity.
• What are the social, economic consequences of
  living till 2000
• Targum, 09/06/01

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The Digital Divide

• A society which is fractured, not along racial
  or economic lines and not by war, famine or
  religion, but by information or, more
  specifically, peoples ability to gain access to
  it

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Gender Communication Issues
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• SOCIETAL
• TRANSFORMATIO N

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• Computer couture?
• Are we designers of technology, or designing
  technology to redesign the nature of nature and
  humanity?
• SEE
• www.scottevest.com

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Social Informatics

• A working conception of social informatics is
  that it identifies a body of research that
  examines the social aspects of computerization.
• A more formal definition is the
  interdisciplinary study of the design, uses and
  consequences of information technologies that
  takes into account their interaction with
  institutional and cultural contexts.
• (Kling, 1999)
• ADAPTABILITY ENGAGEMENT

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Intellectual Capabilities

• Ability to apply information technology to
  complex and sustained situations in the workplace
• Encapsulate higher-level thinking in the context
  of information technology
• Think abstractly about information and its
  manipulation

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Some Components in Intellectual Capabilities

• Engage in sustained reasoning and debate
• Analyze, synthesize, critique, reflect
• Manage complexity test a solution
• Manage problems in faulty solutions
• Organize and navigate information structures and
  evaluate information
• Collaborate communicate to other audiences
• Expect the unexpected
• Anticipate changing technologies
• Think about information technology abstractly

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My Role

• i

• informational
• formational
• facilitator guide
• director
• sounding board
• participant .

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My Expectations

• being prepared for classes
• actively engaging with ideas analytical,
  critical, reflective
• being in class and sharing ideas
• learning together

• e

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Requirements

• Notify Sergio if you are unable to attend any
  class, and an acceptable reason must be given
  (illness, misadventure).
• I operate on the assumption that you have made a
  time commitment to ITI 103 other events in your
  life(that includes relationships and/or sleeping
  habits, okay?) that you control do not take
  precedence. Learning is your primary reason for
  being here.
• Success is in ITI 103 is more than hard work. It
  is hard work in the right direction.