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Newsletter No.1 September 1st 2000

The aim of this newsletter is to sum up briefly the main activities of Cost269 up to the period of summer 2000.

Workgroups

Much of the creative work of Cost269 is organised through workgroups. Three exist at the moment and there is the possibility of a fourth. Obviously it takes time to explore areas of mutual interest and define a research area on this basis

ICTs Capabilities Workgroup

To date the members of this workgroup have concentrated on sharing information about both their own current and recent research in the areas of computer usage, professional usage of ICTs and time factors shaping ICT use. They have also noted other studies pertinent in their field. The workgroup has decided to focus on the area of skills and competencies as regards ICT use , best captured by the term 'capabilities'. Currently they are working towards a discussion paper and plan to gather information about empirical research to map this domain and eventually to produce a position paper on this theme.

Membership/Community Workgroup

This group has focused on the role of ICTs in political and cultural life, considering a wide range of sub-themes including the transparency of Government, implications for democratic processes, knowledge management in this domain, and issues of social exclusion and privacy. The plan is to review top-down initiatives such as E-Europe as well as bottom-up experiments where there has been some empirical research and evaluation of projects. This will cover the countries of the participants: Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland. In keeping with the wider Cost269 focus there is a particular interest in the role of users (and intermediate actors) in relation to ICTs in political and cultural life.

Mobility Workgroup

The aim of this workgroup is to consider the field of mobility in everyday life and how this affects and is affected by ICT use. So far the workgroup has considered mobility per se in terms of hypotheses about factors affecting mobility, the types of relevant national and European data on mobility which are available and actual patterns of mobility. It has also looked at research on factors which people think have changed their patterns of mobility and their subjective experience of mobility. A paper outlining the field of study and relevant issues has been produced. There have also been some discussions of mobility and ICTs and in the next stage the workgroup plans to draw these together into a more systematic paper.

Potential Workgroup : Language/Orality and ICTs - voice vs text vs. pictures

The backdrop for this area of interest is current research to develop a voice interface for computers as well as the convergence between different forms of representation in a range of ICTs: e.g. as phones have displays, mobiles for voice telephony also handle written messaging, TVs carry written messages and answerphones can covert voice to written messages. However, there are a range of issues concerning the differences between and translation between these different forms of representation, of expression. The aim of this workgroup would be to consider these issues, to reflect upon the developments currently taking place and the role of a range of factors pertinent to people's skills in managing these transformations such as age, gender, ethnicity etc.

User Issues

In addition to the efforts of the workgroups, Cost269 members have collectively engaged in a debate about how we conceptualise users and current forms of interest in users and ICTs. The result has been an initial draft paper discussing users and the organisation of iterative feedback to help work towards a position paper.


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