Changing IS

Paul: The LTS view: Systems have people in charge. IS no-one is in charge. Gateways are where systems interoperate.

(Michigan student) IS can have many different meanings.

Is this a perspectival/level artifact?

What is this distinction for?

Historical narrative

CyberIS strategy

Steve: It's the key tension in the Michigan report. Ontological fuzziness can be tolerated in return for what you get from it for the relational perspective

The relational view exposes invisible things that org charts don't. But org charts are easy to get - a way in.

What are the leverage/pressure points highlighted by this model?

Ted: Can a biological model give a different perspective?

*** Garden metaphor

A fractal model may be more appropriate

Latour's ANT is that it's networks all the way down. Inside a "wire" is an org.

IS is about identity

Location; Identity; Time are the only things that count on the Web (or any IS)

Paul: Yes, but what does this allow you to do? Could be left paralysed.

Geof: it exposes that ontologies are in play. Org theory tells us that a good manager is one who improvises. Being in the flow. Modulating ontology.

How to change ontologies? Certeu: How to change ontologies?

Certaeu: Tell a story

Geof: Language speaks us. IS speaks us

How do IS ensure their own survival?

They become interdependent. The sign of a successful IS is that others align/adapt to it.

Understanding and managing borders thus becomes a critical activity

What are the patterns for designing IS for change?

ICDE revision protocols

IETF procedures

Recognising when an IS is broken/detrimental

Looking back to the African innovation in ICT is important in this respect -- a way out of our blindness to our own IS

When people start to demand X-abilities (interoperability, etc)

How does learning figure in the emergent IS

Ted: SATs exemplify a standard shaping practice

Science is about narrative construction - we can view IS as narrative construction support tools

Narrative is a big theme - we have ways to do digital narrative

Timescale?

NASA has a multi-generational project: how to design for this?

Lots of buzzwords: modularity etc, but they're really research topics -- a key contribution we can make

Long term thinking is v hard in today's climate... how to design for this?

NASA story -- hard for contractors to increase budgets in order to plan for the future

"Distribution of time hosrizons"

Infrastructure as a public good. Cf. Genome being appropriated

Where the kowledge resides has always been a tension in NASA

Capitalism 3.0

Michel Callon: Is Science a public Good?"

Science has always been protected by industry, but the rhetoric emerged with Merton's "communalism". Poincare in 1880s. Also 1917 in Australia - German scientisits should be allowed to Aus.

When science is seen as serving the national good (in Italy it was the Fascists who created the CNRs!)

Forestry: 100-200 yr plans in NL

Long Now Foundation - Stewart Brand