KRISTO
IVANOV (http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/Research.html)
(Updated 19 November 2008, in mixed order of publication)
RESEARCH
Position statement and overview for the period after September 2002
POSITION STATEMENT AND LETTER OF
INTENT. After
the promotion to professor emeritus, effective October 2002, and
the definitive dismissal
of compulsive publishing so common in an increasingly industrialized
academic research, my work follows a particular position
statement and "letter of intent". This work tries to respect
Matthew 12:36 ("There is not a thoughtless word that comes from men's
lips but they will have to account for it on the day of judgment")
and is exemplified by the following (in inverse chronological order,
latest
additions
at the top):
(8) RESEARCH PROGRAM
1989-1991 overviewed in November 2008. I wish to make available to colleagues
and researchers
an amount of references to printed material that was stored and systematized
mainly during the years 1989-1991 in view of a comprehensive research program
on the
"essence"
and presuppositions of computer support. The research was not pursued and
concluded because of managerial duties which did not leave room for the effort,
but
the material can be useful for others and it is presented in its pristine
form of drafts.(Please note that the headers' addresses and phones are superseeded
by those in my main homepage.)
1 Introduction
and Summary (pdf)
2 A mathematical-information perspective (pdf)
3 A logical-psychological perspective (pdf)
4 Statistical data processing perspectives (pdf)
5 Softare systems perspective (pdf)
6 A computer-organizational perspective (pdf) [forthcoming]
7 A musical perspective (pdf)
8 An applied research perspective (pdf)
9 A cultural criticism perspective (pdf)
10
Complete reference list - tentative (pdf)
(7) Interview in June 2008 (in Swedish). On occasion of a short and quite informal interview at the Umeå Center för Interaction Technology I had the opportunity to restate some historical facts about informatics and myself, and to renew some frank and modest opinions about my ongoing and future work, in view of the present status of academia and its apparent development.
(6) Research Summary on occasion of the 70th Birthday. On occasion of my 70th birthday in october 2007, and as a response to inquiries about research results, thoughts and feelings, both professional and personal, I wish to present the following short summary based on a few relevant excerpts from The Ecclesiastes. It can also work as a handbook for professors emeriti in general, and as a guide for progressive closing of life's balance-sheet.
(5) Ongoing work (year
2007) which hopefully will be documented in the form of blog-like notes
deals with cultural
criticism of present trends in Swedish intellectual life within the context
of Western thinking, on the basis of experiences and reflections from the
field of informatics and "information", as well as from thoughts
about "theological aesthetics". Scandinavian readers may appreciate
that such concerns are similar to those expressed, for instance,
in the following works:
a)
Stjernfelt,
F., & Thomsen, S. U. (2007). Kritik
av den negativa uppbyggligheten [Critique of the negative edification].
Stockholm: Ruin Förlag. (Danish orig. Kritik af den negative opbyggelighed.
Published by Borgen/Vindrose, 2005.)
b) Arnstberg,
K.-O. (2007). Svenska tabun [Swedish tabus]. Stockholm: Carlssons
(4) "Whither computers and systems? Confessions of a 2006-emeritus", a version of the essay published on occasion of the 40th jubileum (years 1966-2006) of the department which eventually came to be named "computer and systems sciences" (in Swedish, "data- och systemvetenskap") at Stockholm University and the Royal Institute of Technology. It was an opportunity to expand and complement some of my earlier memories and thoughts (among others "A subsystem in the design of informatics: Recalling an archetypal engineer", also in pdf-format, published 1995) about the field's disciplines and people. I am grateful for having been invited to contribute in writing to this celebration, which also allowed me to express some constructive apprehension about the future of the disciplinary development.
(3) An attempt to problematize the apparent phenomenological turn of some of the research at the department at the end of 2003 and beginning of 2004 is summarized in a draft with the title "Experimental realism and empirical idealism in informatics: A virtual interviewer of Don Ihde, and West Churchman" (2004, also in pdf-format, 110KB). Earlier initial tendencies in this direction as inspired by the work of sociologist Karl Weick were considered cursorily in the notes for a series of seminars on "Dialectical systems design and beyond" (years 2000-2002). Conception of technologies in general och information-communication artifacts in particular, inspired by the work of Churchman, were presented as "Contributions of systems thinking to the understanding and use of information technology: Infrastructure, change, and bricolage", with additional notes referring to the phenomenology of M. Merleau-Ponty, including the problem of embodiment as in M. Johnson's "the body in the mind", and G. Lakoff & M. Johnson's "philosophy in the flesh".
(2) The engagement,
in March 2003, as faculty opponent
for the act of disputation of a doctoral dissertation at the department
of computer science of the Lund Institute of Technology, Lund university.
The extended
bibliographic data of the object and stream of this research are as follows:
Persson, Erik (2002). Shadows
of cavernous shades: Charting the chiaroscuro of realistic computing (alternative
link here). Lund:
Lund University, Dept. of Computer Science. (Doctoral diss. No. 20,
2003, LU-CS-DISS:2003:1, ISSN 1650-1268, ISBN 91-628-5512-3,
xiv+727
pp.
in A4-format, with a bibliography of 4448 entries, and 2877 notes.
See esp. chap. 4 on "Realistic computing" [cf. Virtual
Reality, VR, and visualization] and chap. 5 on "Science, metaphysics
and computing".
Cf. the account of the doctoral disputation by Anders Fagerström "Gud-vetenskapen
slutade 2-1" [God-science ended
2-1] in Sydsvenska Dagbladet, p. C11. 9 March 2003. Review
by Christian Braw "Tro,
tvivel och vetenskap" ["Faith, doubt and science"], Svenska
Dagbladet 22 July 2003, "Under strecket", restricted
access at a link
at Svenska Dagbladet's web address <http://www.svd.se/understrecket>,
accessed 25 July 2003. An Interview
with the author was published in Dagen, 25 April
2003. Reflections on interviews with people involved in the dissertations's
disputation process were edited by Britta Collberg in "Avhandlingar
som rör
om" [Stirring doctoral dissertations] in Lund university's
journal LUM,
Vol. 36, No. 8, 2003, pp. iii-vi (part of the pdf-document linked
here). The dissertations's "Addenda
et corrigenda" (in
English), including errata for the text of dissertation, 7 pages,
are obtainable from the
author.
(1) [In Swedish] Short summary of achievements, on occasion of the promotion to professor emeritus on October 1st, 2002.
Research up to year 2002
Disciplinary studies and
basic research in informatics and systems science. Selected texts.
For the period after September 2002 please see the special section above.
For your convenience there is available a list of
(1) Selected publications,
and a statement of research interests expressing some ideas for basic research
in informatics, in an overall summary of research interests up to year 2001,
namely:
(2) The Systems Approach to Design, and Inquiring Information Systems: Scandinavian experiences and proposed research program, (2001, as abstracted in the publication in Information Systems Frontiers, vol 3, No 1; see also a pre-publication version). It is supplemented by the materials for an ongoing series of research seminars, on
(3) Ethics and Politics of Design and System Cultures for an ongoing (2001) critical review of latest tendencies in informatic theorizing about "design" as contrasted to systems thinking, and related to postromantic and postmodern tendencies (pre-Socratic sophistry and post-Kantian aestheticizing on the basis of the Third Critique, of "Judgment", and philosophies of Fichte, Schelling, Nietzsche, Bergson, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Lyotard). It also includes the rationale for earlier research projects on
(4) Aesthetics and Ethics of Multimedia Research, and Computers' Cultural Nature: Motivations for use, and basis for design and evaluations (1996, Statements of research intentions and projects). The build-up of this position during the last years is documented in the following selected papers, chronologically:
(5) Computer-supported Human Science or Humanistic Computing Science (1991, 370KB),
(6) Critical Systems Thinking and Information Technology (1991, J. of Applied Systems Analysis, Vol. 18, 39-55).
Ivanov's specific personal contribution and extension of the dialectical social systems theory, close to the aim of "critical systems thinking" and "critical systems heuristics"), is represented (before the final twist towards politics, ethics, and theology) by
(7) Hypersystems: A base for specification of computer-supported self-learning social systems (pre-publication version). In C. M. Reigeluth & B. H. Banathy & J. R. Olson (Eds.), Comprehensive systems design: A new educational technology (pp. 381-407). New York: Springer-Verlag, 1993. Some of these thoughts are detailed further in a publication written later but published earlier, i.e.
(8) Computer-human interaction as continuous system reconstruction. In M. Bazewicz (Ed.), Information Systems' Architecture and Technology ISAT '92 (pp. 37-49). Wroclaw: Politechnika Wroclawska, 1992. The attempt to develop dialectical systems theory by reviewing its basis in politics, and, further, in ethics and theology, is represented by works that follow,
(9) Belief and Reason (1993, 270KB), (Commented selections on presuppositions of participatory cooperative argumentative design and change),
(10) The Search for a Theory of Hypermedia [multimedia] (1995). In Proceedings of the Information Systems Research Seminar in Scandinavia IRIS'18 (pp. 283-293). (Gothenburg Studies in Informatics, Report 7). An earlier version was presented at the international Workshop on Social Contexts of Hypermedia, Umeå, February 17-18, 1995,
(11) Presuppositions in information systems design: From systems to networks and contexts? Accounting, Management and Information Technology, renamed Information & Organization, 5, 99-114.(1996, 1OOO KB, in PDF-format, link to on-line web-access),
(12) Strategies and Design for Information Technology: Eastern or neo-romantic wholes, and the return to Western systems. (1997/1998, 100 KB), and
(13) Platonic information technology. Reading Plato: Cultural influences and philosophical reflection on information and technology, (2000, Proc. of ISTAS 2000, IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Symposium on Technology and Society, 6-8 September 2000, Rome; link to publisher. For a pre-publication version, click here). This essay is an edited selection from a longer ongoing study, Platonic Information Technology (2000-2001, 300 KB, also in PDF-format, including Table of Contents) a reader with reference to edited excerpts of Plato's collected works, to be possibly followed later by a similar project on Aristotelian Information Technology.
A pervasive theoretical and methodological inspiration for these concerns with
respect to informatics including computer science has long been
(14) C. West Churchman in his work on the philosophy and practice of science, in particular systems science, at the
(15) University of California-Berkeley,
as represented mainly by The Design of Inquiring Systems (1971). In order to
put into evidence the relevance of this work for design in general and information
systems or IT-artefacts in particular, including its relevance for other research
and education going on in the department, please see the link to
(16) Index to The Design of Inquiring Systems (2002, 130 KB, also in PDF-format). Among the entries there will be found also names of the staff of the department as associated to key words and issues that characterize their areas of interest.
A short selective selective summary of the local, departmental research and education effort based on more than 40 years' working life is available in the form of the following text:
(17) Speech held September 27th 2002 on occasion of prof. Kristo Ivanov's promotion to emeritus effective October 1st 2002, by Kenneth Nilsson, head of the department of Informatics, Umeå University. (In Swedish)