The Technology Conference and The International Journal of Technology create a forum for discussion and a place for the publication of innovative theories and practices relating technology to society.
The Conference and the Journal are cross-disciplinary in their scope, meeting points for technologists with a concern for the social and social scientists with a concern for the technological. The focus is primarily, but not exclusively, on information and communications technologies.
Equally interested in the mechanics of social technologies and the social impact of technologies, the Conference and the Journal are guided by the ideals of an open society, where technology is used to address human needs and serve community interests. These concerns are grounded in the values of creativity, innovation, access, equity and personal and community autonomy. In this space, commercial and community interests at times complement each other; at other times they appear to be at loggerheads. The conference and the journal will examine the nature of the new technologies, their connection with community, their use as tools for learning, and their place in a 'knowledge society'.
Technologies
Over the past quarter century, digital technologies have become signature change agents in all aspects of our domestic, working and public lives. Whether it is our awareness of the world through the media, formal or informal learning, shopping, banking, travelling or communicating, digital technologies are everywhere. The hardware is getting less expensive relative to the power of the technology. Meanwhile, a battle is being fought in the domain of intellectual property between software that is proprietary and sometimes closed, and software that is open and sometimes free.
How do we understand and evaluate the workings of these technologies? To answer this question we need to recruit the disciplines of computer science, software engineering, communications systems and applied linguistics. We need to develop and apply the conceptual tools of cybernetics, informatics, systemics and the theory of distributed networks. And how do we understand their effects? Here we might consider the impact of the new media, intelligent systems or human-machine interfaces.
This conference, to be held at the Fortune Katriya Hotel, Hyderabad, India, from 12-15 December 2005, will address a range of critically important themes in the various fields that address the complex and subtle relationships between technology, knowledge and society. Main speakers include some of the leading thinkers in these areas, as well as numerous paper, colloquium and workshop presentations.
Participants are invited to submit presentation proposals for 30 minute papers, 60 minute workshop, or jointly presented 90 minute colloquium sessions. Parallel sessions are loosely grouped into streams reflecting different perspectives or disciplines. Each stream also has its own talking circles a forum for focused discussion of issues.
Presenters may choose to submit written papers for publication before or after the conference in the new International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society. Presentations submitted for publication will be fully refereed and published in print and electronic formats. For those unable to attend the conference in person, virtual registrations are available, which provide access to the online edition of the conference proceedings. Virtual participants can also submit papers for refereeing and publication in the Journal.
Theme 1: Technologies for Human Use
Technology, knowledge and society: re-examining the connections.
Human-technology interaction, interfaces and useability.
Cybernetics, informatics, systemics and distributed networks.
New media, new communications channels: broadcasting, to narrowcasting, to pointcasting.
Open computing: the theory and practice of open source and free software.
Creative Commons.
Copyright and digital rights management.
Proprietary software and its human influences.
Data and metadata: meanings, boundaries, functions.
Open standards and the logistics of communicability and interoperability.
Structure and semantics in information.
The Semantic Web.
Markup languages, new markup practices, new literacies.
Wireless and mobile information and communications technologies.
Multilingualism, Unicode and machine translation.
Artificial intelligence, intelligent systems, intelligent agents.
Theme 2: Technologies for Participatory Citizenship
Technology, participation, access and equity.
Technology in capacity development.
Digital development: bridging the digital divide.
E-government, e-democracy and cyber-civics.
Participatory systems.
The politics of information.
Globalisation and technology.
Multilingualism and cultural diversity in the digital age.
Technological meets social transformation.
Technical and social systems of sustainability.
The wild world of the Web: regulation and its discontents.
Theme 3: Technologies for Autonomous Communities
Communities of practice and knowledge-creating communities.
Virtual communities.
Communities as publishers.
Communities as networks: the dynamics of collaboration and community building.
Information architectures: scaffolds for autonomy or restrictive straight-jackets?
Multi-channel publishing.
E-books and alternative reading devices.
Digital print, variable print and print-on-demand.
Digital repositories, archives and libraries.
Disability and access.
Differences of sensibility and access: gender, language, culture.
Cyber-identities.
Creative sources: the technologies of art and the arts of technology.
Cyber-ethics and cyber-law.
Theme 4: Technologies for New Learning
Learning by design: curriculum and instruction in the era of networked computing. F20
Edutainment: gaming as pedagogy.
Perception, cognition and interactivity.
Children of the digital era: learning styles and the challenges of engagement.
Interactive and collaborative learning.
Digital meanings, multimodal communications and multiliteracies.
Lifelong and lifewide learning.
E-learning on the job and in work-related training.
Organisational learning and the learning organisation.
Formal and informal learning.
Help menus and user-guides: website and software-integrated learning.
The virtual university.
E-humanities and e-social sciences.
E-learning in the professions.
Theme 5: Technologies for Common Knowledge
Technology in the service of the 'knowledge society'.
Data, information, knowledge, wisdom: re-examining core concepts.
Knowledge management: nurturing personal and common knowledge.
Information systems and people in organisations.
Research infrastructures.
Participatory design.
Intellectual property: approaches digital rights management.
Creative Commons and commercial realities: what are the economic conditions for knowledge and innovation?
E-commerce, open markets and open knowledge: contradictions or complementarities?
Technologies of security and terror.
Collaborations: from personal to interpersonal computing.
Theme 6: Technologies for Development
Information and communications technologies and development.
ICTs: how the poor will benefit.
Situating ICTs in development policies and strategies.
Global interactions: technologies, development and globalisation.
Globalisation, technology and social transformations in India.
Special Theme: Author, Authenticity and Authority in Digital Heritage
Recording the present and preserving the past: digital archives and repositories.
Digitised cultural heritage: issues of access, retrieval, presentation and longevity.
Virtual museums, libraries and archives.
The role of the digital and the digitisation of legacy materials in traditional museums, libraries and archives.
Digital accession, cataloguing and indexing practices for physical and digital objects.
Text encoding, imaging and recording sound.
Locating digital sources: searching, data mining, data harvesting, and digital resource discovery.
‘Barefoot’ computing: finding low-cost, easy-to-use solutions for marginal communities.
Multimodality: integrating data and metadata for text, still image, sound, video, databases, software, multimedia and web matter.