[Sigiii-l] AM03 Session 49

[Michel J. Menou]

It was suggested that members who attended the Annual Meeting should
share their notes on the list for the benefit of the members who did
not attend.
(Not)Complying with the old KM rule "Do what I say not what I do",
below my modest contribution.

SIG/CON was well attended, as usual, and featured an original choir to
ease transition between the papers. Candy Schwartz annouced that this
year papers will be soon available in the SIG/CON electronic archive
she is maintaining. Many presentations made use of visuals and
pictures that seem to be the only practical way toward humanizing
information systems at this moment.

I attended (among others but this is the one about which I took notes)
Session 49 Exploring the the dark side: Ethical Implications of
Information technologies. The session was moderated by T.A. Morris
(Kent State) and featured Tom Froelich (Kent State), Vic Rosenberg
(U. Michigan) and Marti Smith (Drexel).
Tom Froelich deconstructed many hypes about the Internet as THE
information resource, stressing that it lacks the many qualities added
by professional work in collection development and the informed
consent of the users, among other things.
Vic Rosenberg revisited a 1972 paper of his to illustrate how
excessive if not foolish some assumptions of information science are.
This may be summarized by the totalitarian drive of "perfect
information systems" that downgrade human beings and rely upon
pathogenic premises such as reductionism.
Marti Smith cross-examined the 7 temptations, or justifications, of
distance education showing how the technology push puts aside the
required attention to, and investment in, human factors.
Not so much a luddite session as it may look but an useful
counterpoint to the pervasive ICT worshipping.

Note that this session was announced on site as part of 3 sessions
sponsored by SIG MED none of which was listed as such in the final
program. One more example that information is first a human process,
and the business of specialists :-).

Ah yes, I tried to attend the plenaries but you know, I'm sort of
allergic to this format.

Michel                          mailto:Michel.Menou at wanadoo.fr

P.S. I understand that an account of SIG/III activities will soon be
available on our award winning SIG web site