Kristo Ivanov: Contributions of systems thinking to the understanding and use of information technology: Infrastructure, change, and bricolage

This seminar, is one of the promised further follow-up seminars on the issue of systems design, as announced in the autumn's seminars of October 10th and November 14th (please see the latest call at http://www.informatik.umu.se/seminarier/2001/1005740100-1005746400.mit-huset.mc413).

In this seminar, a sort of partial professorial "testament" in view of my coming retirement, I will assume that the documentation of the latter seminar, i.e. mainly "Ethics and Politics in Design and Systems Cultures (http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/DesSysCulture.html) has been read. This assumption is made in humorous analogy to the biblical spirit of Matthew 13:4-13, Mark 8:18, and Rom 11:8 (cf. the standard edition of The New Jerusalem Bible in our department's library, pp. 1630, 1670, 1883)!

This additional seminar will be dedicated to connecting the previous ones to an interpretation of technology, or more specifically information technology (IT/ICT), and to dialectical social systems theory as in C.W. Churchman's The Design of Inquiring Systems (DIS). With the purpose of furthering my ongoing research as related to my colleagues' I will share some preliminary thoughts about the meaning of webs of meaning and action, and networks of actors, as they are affected by or related to IT. Insofar time allows I will also try to illustrate what it to be understood as a dialectics of (democratic) innovation and exploration, as "infrastructure", and as "change" vs. "bricolage" in terms of the involved decision theory. I will express my understanding of the possible essence of IT that entices, lures, attracts, virtualizes, or stimulates the senses or the "body", as a way of unveiling truth in a sort of Heideggerian spirit. This will be done also by referring to Aristotelian phronesis, Kantian aesthetics, and Marxist concepts, and will point to the second part of my above mentioned document on ethics and politics of design and systems cultures (§§ 23-35). In other words: what could or should we pay more attention to in our research?

Välkomna!
Mikael Wiberg