Social informatics in the future?

Abstract

When Internet in the middle of the 1990s made its breakthrough a revolution occurred compared to the industrial revolution. Suddenly the cost for information transport was reduced to almost zero and genuinely new opportunities arose. Work, that can be performed by unskilled workers, are outsourced and the focus is on the business process. This requires a genuine new way of doing business; we see a need for trust, loyalty, and sharing of values. Education of users at the workplace will be a major concern and a common language and a mutual and deep understanding of the concepts and social contexts used is a prerequisite. A 3D apple model for context is described. For defining the social context, a user centred approach must be used. We need genuinely new informatics paradigms adapted to the network economy. This requires a massive re-education of all workers, both white and blue collar. To sum it all up: Reliable and sustainable production, availability of reliable information, trust, and flexibility are the means for us to survive in this new economy. © 2006 International Federation for Information Processing.