Social Informatics. Think & work different.

SI aim to ensure that technical research agendas and system designs are relevant to people's lives. The keyword is relevance, ensuring that technical work is socially-driven rather than technology-driven. Relevance has two dimensions: process and substance.

 Design and implementation processes need to be relevant to the actual social dynamics of a given site of social practice, and the substance of design and implementation (the actual designs, the actual systems) need to be relevant to the lives of the people they affect.

SI sets agendas for all the technical work in two ways:

1) more superficially, by drawing attention to functionalities that people value, thus setting priorities for design and implementation

2) more fundamentally, by articulating those analytical categories that have been found useful in describing social reality, and that which therefore should also define technical work in/for that reality as well.

 Unfortunately, many technical professionals have viewed social concerns as peripheral.

 One key role of SI is to stand things back on their feet, so that social concerns are central and define the ground that technical work stands on. Professional systems designer oriented to social informatics could design a new system.  A systems designer with a socio-technical orientation does not simply consider these elements while working in a 'design studio' far away from the people who will use a specific system. Effectively On Similarities and Differences between Social Informatics and Information Systems designing socio-technical systems also requires upon a set of 'discovery processes' to help the designers understand which features and tradeoffs will most appeal to the people who are most likely to use the system.

 There are a number of discovery processes for learning about the preferences of the men and women who are likely to use these systems. These discovery processes include workplace ethnography, focus group, user participation in design teams, and participatory design strategies. These approaches differ in many significant ways, such as the contextual richness of the understandings that they reveal and the extent to which they give the people who will use systems influence and power in their design.

 These issues are the subject of a lively body of research that overlaps social informatics.As we develop more elaborate ICTs and try to use them in almost every sphere of social life, we face fresh theoretical challenges for social informatics.

 Its possibilities and value are illustrated by some of key ideas:
1) the social shaping of ICTs,
2) the conceptions of highly intertwined socio-technical networks,
3) roles of social incentives in energizing new electronic media, and
4) the conceptualization of ICT infrastructure as socio-technical practices and resources.

 First, to set the groundwork for socio-technical networks, start with a more general concept, that ICT, in practice, is socially shaped. In the standard (non-social informatics) accounts of ICT and social change, it is common to hear information technologies characterized as tools, and questions are asked about their social impacts. To take a wider perspective, the combination of equipment, people, governance structures, and ICT policies is called "the local computing package".

 Secondly, the local computing package is also an example of a socio-technical network. A socio-technical network brings together equipment, equipment vendors, technical specialists, upper-level managers, ICT policies, internal funding, and external grant funding with the people who will use information systems in the course of other work (such as policing, accounting, taxing or planning).
These elements are not simply a static list but are interrelated within a matrix of social and technical dependencies.

Thirdly, one key idea of social informatics research is that the social context of information technology development and use plays a significant role in influencing the ways in which people use information and technologies and thus affects the consequences of the technology for work, organizations, and other social relationships. Social context can be characterized by particular incentive systems for using, organizing and sharing information in different work groups and work roles.

  Finally, workable computer applications are usually supported by a strong sociotechnical infrastructure. The surface features of computer systems are the most visible and are the primary subject of debates and systems analyses. But they are only one part of computerization projects. Many key parts of information systems are neither immediately visible nor interesting in their novelty. They include technical infrastructure such as reliable electricity. They also involve a range of skilled support - from people to documents system features and training people to use them, to rapid-response consultants who can diagnose and repair system failures.

Successful People Don’t Just Listen to What People Tell Them, They Have These 7 Critical Thinking Habits

The toughest thing about critical thinking is the fact that you need to suspend your judgment while you do so, keeping your very open to the thought that the belief you have about something, can in the next instant, proven to be wrong or incorrect. Also, as a critical thinker, you are in a way deviating from the norm, which means all the things that your peers believe and even want you to believe, can, in fact, be incorrect. The very basis of critical thinking is an almost continuous back and forth between making theories or beliefs, and then trying to accept or eliminate what works and what doesn’t.



Despite the difficulty of critical thinking, it is becoming more and more of a valued tool in the professional field – perhaps because there is a dearth of critical thinkers. So to see whether you are the next best thing since sliced bread when it comes to critical thinking, you should try to take The California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory – a psychological test that can be used to measure whether people are disposed to think critically or not, by measuring seven different thinking habits or essential skills. 

 

• Truth-seeking: Are you a flame carrier for truth, and nothing but? Do you try and understand how things actually are instead of believing hearsay?
• Open-mindedness: Is new information acceptable, good or just bad to you? Do you give new ideas, even if they “sound” weird or wrong, a fair chance? Or are you closed to modernity?
• Analyticity: Do you try and find and understand the reasons behind things? Are your decisions gut-based or do they have pros and cons behind them?
• Systematical: Are you orderly in your approach of problem-solving? Do you break down a problem into parts and then tackle them one by one?
• Confidence in Reasoning: Do you always defer to other people or is your own belief more important to you? Are you confident in your own judgment and do you think that you have reasons for your confidence? Do you like to evaluate your own thinking?
• Inquisitiveness: Do you question, and question often? Are you full of curiosity?
• The Maturity of Judgment: Do you take time in reaching a conclusion or do you jump to conclusions? Do you try and analyze things from different perspectives and take other people’s experiences into account, instead of just valuing yourself above it all?

So the essential skills needed in critical thinking are analyzing, applying the standards, classifying, seeking further information, logical deduction, predictions and finally and most importantly: “transforming” the conclusions into knowledge.




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"Data currency": Can Blockchain turned personal data into the world's most valuable currency

Should we be selling our data to the highest bidder, or is it all about 'value exchange'?

The modern business-consumer relationship is built on the principle of information exchange. But what if individuals could take complete control of their own data and even sell this directly to businesses in exchange for products or services?

 Could we all have cryptocurrency wallets on our phones that track the data we have sold and how much we have earned from it?

 The changing data economy will see new relationships develop between businesses and their customers. According to FileCatalyst, 1.3 exabytes (or 1.3 million TBs) of new data is generated every day. How this mass of information is exchanged, stored, manipulated and monetized will radically alter, as consumers take back more control of the data they generate.

 Data has become one of the most precious assets a business or individual now possesses. As new data collection points are created, such as wearable technologies, our cars, the burgeoning IoT (Internet of Things), or the increased use of APIs, these streams of information will form the core of the relationship between their creators and collectors.

 Having more control over all this extra data then becomes the foundation on which consumers can build their own 'data currency'. What's missing at the moment is a way to enable this control on a practical level.

 "For the consumer... the technology [blockchain] offers the potential, according to the circumstances, for individual consumers to control access to personal records and to know who has accessed them".

 For many, this is exactly the sort of technology that enables what 'Web 3.0' promises to bring: an environment where data is democratized, where strong data encryption and secure decentralized networks enable everyone to access goods and services without being surveilled. In this world, the data middlemen of today are replaced with blockchain-based networks that deliver complete control to the individual – the user gives permission for companies to access their data temporarily for the purpose of powering a service. There will be no third-party companies making money off data transfers or storage, nor will there be government departments holding the keys to that information.

 From today's perspective, this may seem a utopian view, but the idea of data being something that subjects can market as a commodity is already playing out. "Individuals are already taking more control of their personal data and even selling this directly to businesses that want it,"

 The rise of blockchain has made the idea of "data marketplaces" a reality. Developing blockchain-based, decentralized data marketplaces that provide individuals with a way to securely and anonymously sell validated private information within a trust-less environment.

 We should be thinking of our data as something to be sold to the highest bidder. Currently there is a focus on individuals selling data – largely driven by the argument that Facebook and others are making money with our data. "However, we shouldn't see this as simply selling data – it is a 'value exchange' where value may be service, convenience or reward. For example, sharing my health data with an app that helps me manage my diabetes say isn't about selling data – the value is in keeping me healthy. Yes, there will be some sale of data, but the far greater exchange will be about service and convenience." 

 It's important to remember that this is all predicated on the assumption that technologies like blockchain are actually able to bring some kind of control back to data owners.


 Source (part of)

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