COST269 What's New
Back to : Main
/ What's new
; next Newsletter
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.
|