ICTS AND SOCIETY: THE SALZBURG APPROACH - ICT&S

ICTs and Society: The Salzburg Approach
ence methods combining social and human, natural, and engineering science
methods that produce knowledge of, and inform acting upon, that object
of study.
As a consequence, the Internet and the Web, in particular,
• are considered a desirable good insofar as they are shapable so as to
bring about the advent of the GSIS, that is, as technologies that inhere the
potential of providing the glue for the world society to come, of counterbalancing
the tendencies of heterogenisation, fragmentation, disintegration,
by fostering cooperation, and of breaking the ground for a shared consciousness
that is required by a reorganised world;
• are investigated as something ambivalent, as something embedded in the
social disparities characteristic of contemporary societies and as catalyst of
contradictions, as something that not only opens up a space of possibilities
for future societal ordering but also is subject to today’s order in which
competitive, partial interests prevail;
• are not only analysed but also synthesised in thought as something that
needs methods of both sides of the two science cultures, as techno-social
systems that are a subcategory of social systems, as composed of “produsers”
that organise themselves by means of hard- and software into
communities of practice.
The quest for a science of the Information Society sets the stage for research in
the interrelationship of ICTs and society.
We discuss how aims, scope, and tools of a science of the Information Society
may shape ICT&S Research.
4.1 Aims
If it is the aims of an as-yet-to-be-developed science for the Information Society to
help govern society when confronted with the well-known global challenges, it is the
aims of transdisciplinary ICT-and-society research to contribute to shaping ICTs so
as to help bring about a Global Sustainable Information Society (GSIS). A GSIS can
be defined in a normative way and the ICTs can be assessed according to how
they facilitate society to live up to these values. This is in sharp contrast to either
undertaking research solely for reasons of curiosity or being instrumental to whatever
is demanded by parts of society. In contrast to the ideology of value-free science,
here the normatve criteria are laid down to which ICTs as well as society
shall be subject. A state of future society is envisioned in which the criteria are
met.
Hofkirchner | Fuchs | Raffl | Schafranek | Sandoval | Bichler 22