| Letter to the Convivio community |
Giorgio De Michelis
The community of researchers, designers and practitioners who are developing new interactive systems to augment home and work spaces is growing all over the world. At its conferences and workshops people from different disciplines meet to create platforms for collaborating and sharing expertise; in its journals stimulating papers present innovative systems and new approaches to ICT design; and every year, new people join.
In Europe, this community has shaped itself around research initiatives such as i3 and the Disappearing Computer, and now Convivio. Its vision is one based on an open discussion of the purposes and underlying values of new technologies, and on respect for the diversity of human practices. We believe that this vision is of paramount importance for the future of European society, and can make a positive contribution to the development of new technologies all over the world – not in the least because of Europe’s strong tradition of innovation in design and the arts. The proposed change of perspective is a radical one.
Yet this community – our community - still has little influence either on governmental and super-national policies or on industrial strategies. As a result, it also has little impact on the quality of ICT in public and private life.
Consider just one example. ‘Ambient Intelligence’ is a keyword in new EC research programmes and has emerged as a new paradigm for the Information Society. But there is a risk that it may be reduced to a fig leaf covering the usual techno-centric perspective, on which the European Commission has already wasted large amounts of money without being able to sustain the European ICT industry.
We are hoping that this will change, and that Convivio will play a role in this by helping the community find its voice, articulate its vision and communicate its ideas. We already have workshops, conferences and summer schools to support this process. Now there is the Convivio web-zine, another important step towards making Convivio – the network, its people and its work – more visible and, because of this, more influential. I hope that it will have many readers and many contributors!
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