Once in a great while, a scholarly event occurs that, at least in hindsight, was a milestone in the sociology of knowledge.  In modern times we have seen the 1975 Asilomar Conference on safety and regulation of recombinant DNA technologies, for example.

This past March 15-16, 2005, a National Science Foundation-sponsored conference was held outside of Washington, D.C. that, 20 years hence, might prove to be a similar milestone.  While apparently there were no journalists participating, it was a meeting with great portent for us, especially those journalists who consider their best work to be a solid social science endeavor.

The conference was called: “SBE/CISE Workshop on Cyberinfrastructure for the Social Sciences.”  Glossary time: “SBE” means “Social, Behavioral, and Economics.”  “CISE” means “Computer & Information Science & Engineering.”  Cyberinfrastructure?  Well, you can figure that one out.

The workshop concept:

“Cyberinfrastructure is the coordinated aggregate of software, hardware and other technologies, as well as human expertise, required to support current and future discoveries in science and engineering. The challenge of Cyberinfrastructure is to integrate relevant and often disparate resources to provide a useful, usable, and enabling framework for research and discovery characterized by broad access and “end-to-end” coordination.

Today, most Cyberinfrastructure efforts are focused on the development and integration of Cyberinfrastructure technologies and resources. Fewer efforts have focused on the immense repercussions of the social dynamics and organizational, policy, management and administration decisions inherent in developing and deploying Cyberinfrastructure. Such choices, and the social, cultural, and behavioral impacts of how we develop, manage, and evolve Cyberinfrastructure will be critical to its success.

“Recommendations and Challenges

·        Summary Recommendation 1: Develop and deploy enabling data-oriented Cyberinfrastructure targeted to the social and behavioral sciences.

·        Summary Recommendation 2: Develop and deploy targeted toolkits, virtual, and computational environments for facilitating social and behavioral science research.

·        Summary Recommendation 3: Instrument and design technologies to gather and provide key data for social scientists. Conversely, utilize human and computer interaction data to instrument and design Cyberinfrastructure technologies.

·        Summary Recommendation 4: Ensure that confidentiality, privacy, and other social and policy considerations are included as part of the architecture of Cyberinfrastructure.

·        Summary Recommendation 5: Involve social and behavioral scientists in the design of organizational frameworks, incentive structures, collaborative environments, decision-making protocols, and other social aspects of Cyberinfrastructure.

·        Summary Recommendation 6: Develop adequate funding models for Cyberinfrastructure that will enable social and behavioral science research.

·        Summary Recommendation 7: Develop explicit venues for funding inter-disciplinary SBE and CISE research on the social impacts of Cyberinfrastructure.

·        Summary Recommendation 8: Develop the community for Cyberinfrastructure and Social Sciences through targeted funding programs, meetings, workshops, conferences, and other activities.”